₦airaland Forum

@Angel55555

*

Alhaji’s grip loosened and I was surprised when he reached behind me for the broom and parker lying in a corner and he went ahead to sweep the shards. I was shaken and I stood rooted on a spot watching him as he swept. After returning the broom to its former position he drew me into his embrace.

“You-you can’t do this sir, please con-consider your wife sir,” I stammered.

“Shh don’t worry, you are a beautiful girl and my eye has been on you since the first day I saw you. I really like you ehn, I can take of you” he rasped not releasing me.

I struggled to break free from his iron grip but he held me tightly and his hand went to the back of the gown I wore and he zipped the cloth down. The gown slipped from my shoulders revealing the black lacy bra I wore. Alhaji’s eyes widened as he took in the round soft mold of flesh spilling from my bra and his hands moved to cup my breasts.

He fondled them gently as if afraid to cause me pain and he unclasped the piece of clothing expertly my breasts spilling into his hands. I started screaming for help and I struggled against him to free myself but Alhaji’s strength was like that of a bear. There was no one in the big house to help me and he could handle me as much as he wanted no matter how loud I screamed.

“Stop shouting” he said laughing, “we are the only ones at home”.

He lifted me and carried me bodily to the master’s bedroom he shared with his wife leaving behind my bra where it had fallen on the kitchen floor.
He deposited me on the large bed in the big room and proceeded to rip my gown leaving me almost naked except for the pink cotton panties I still had on.

He slid it down my leg and I was completely naked in the large bed with soft white bed sheet. I begged with tears running down my cheeks and snot running from my nose. He promised me that it wouldn’t hurt, eased out of his boxers, spread open my leg and entered into me.

I felt a searing pain and screamed. He covered my mouth with his and I bit down on it with all I had. He reared his head back but only smiled wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. He moved faster and having spent all my energy I laid motionlessly beneath him the tears dripping from the corners of my eyes to the bed. His breath came in gasps as he reached his climax and he dumped his seed inside me. He rolled off me with a big smile on his face, his breath steadying.

I sobbed silently the inside of my legs throbbing. I wished it had all been a nightmare. He stood up and put on a loose caftan, he reached for me where I curled on the bed in shame and carried me inside the bathroom. He ran the tap and washed the evidence of what transpired between us away from my body.

I watched the blood flowing down my inner thighs mix with the water running down the drain. He wrapped me in a white towel and called me his woman.
Stepping out of the bathroom, my eyes fell on the scarlet stained bed sheet and I burst into a fresh round of tears. He peeled the sheet from the mattress smiling at his conquest and he threw it in a bunch at the corner of the room.

“Do you want something hot to drink” he asked me as I stood shivering from the experience and if I had a knife with me I would cut the smile away from his face and proceed to carve his heart out of his body.

Angel55555:
Nice story, wouldn't it better tho if you publish it on apps like wattpad, it's good for beginners and it's free...... I think

Hey, thanks for this information. I really don't know about wattpad, this is not a novel it's just a novellete. I will check it out but for now I will be updating here. Thanks for taking your time to read my story! I will be sure to mention you in my next update!

@Jack273

***

Present day


The rain has finally stopped and the sun is shining brightly already. Goosebumps form across my exposed arms as a draught sweeps through the gaping windows. I rub my palms against each other briskly, the warmth seeping through my body.
I started seeing a therapist last month when I began to wake up in the middle of the night screaming for my dead parents. It had been going on for over a while and my husband eventually suggested the therapist when he couldn’t bear the sight of me thrashing around on the bed every night anymore.

The first time I met the therapist, the pint sized woman with graying afro hair looked calmly at me as I sat across her. My husband was not with me, he sat in the car outside to wait for me. The woman asked me if I saw things and I had answered no. She asked if my husband had forced me to come and I said no. She then asked me if I had been assaulted in any way before.

A knot wedged in my throat and the tears started down my face dropping on the yellow blouse I wore. The therapist looked on silently offering no words of consolation but she gently handed me a box of tissues giving me time to wipe the tears from my face. I had begun talking but suddenly burst into violent tears and again the therapist was not surprised.

I told her all the sordid details and how I hated my body. I could never enjoy sex and I also didn’t want to give birth.
She noted all these in her jotter and as she wrote I looked around the small office. Her desk was almost empty except for her note and a laptop. Painted a soft baby blue, the room itself was almost empty except for a painting of a flower in a vase on the wall and an air conditioner placed in the corner keeping the room cool.

The therapist glanced up from her note, adjusted her glasses and looked at me.

“So this house you always see in your dream, have you ever been there since you left? Have you ever considered going back?” She asked.

I had shaken my head no. She then went ahead to tell me that I had to move on and I should go back to where it all happened so I might be able to release myself from whatever it was that was holding me back. I was to seek closure she had said.

It has been months since I started seeing the therapist. The nightmares were still recurring and this morning without telling my husband I left the house leaving a note behind that I needed to find myself again. I feel sorry for my husband and I wonder if he would have been better off with another woman. These days I feel like a taint on his life.

***

Twelve years ago

I started work immediately settling easily into my daily routine. Alhaja was a business woman who sold gold jewelries and expensive lace. She travelled from Nigeria to China and Dubai to buy her wares and her business was going well. She had three boutiques in different malls which she supervised from time to time.

The first time I met her husband I was awed. My boss was beautiful and Alhaji was perfectly suited for her. He was a chocolate toned man with hard muscular body. He towered over almost everybody, easily swallowing up his wife’s frame when they stood beside each other. He had a large booming voice that always filled the house and when he laughed it rumbled, the sound rattling the windows and doors in the house.

Alhaji was a large scale farmer who had many people working for him. Unlike his wife he did all his business in Nigeria. He owned many hectares of land where he grew spices and cocoa. He sold his farm produce to foreign buyers who came to Nigeria to buy the raw materials from him.

Unfortunately my boss and her husband had no children of their own and they were both in their late forties. Alhaji always called my boss by her first name Sefi whenever they were together. She had gotten pregnant and given birth on several occasions like many married women but the babies where always born dead. She had stopped trying and she resolved herself to fate.

I wanted to slap myself that morning when I asked her if I should prepare food for her and the children the next day I arrived. I assumed that the children must have been out and that explained their absence. She smiled sadly when she told me gently that she didn’t have any. I apologized profusely and prayed that God answer her prayer, even though she told me that she wasn’t trying for a child again.

Two weeks after I started working for her, my boss informed me that she was travelling on a business trip and she left me to take care of her husband in her absence. I felt slightly unsettled with this as it was the first time that I would stay alone in the house with Alhaji and besides her trip would last up to three weeks. I waved her goodbye from the front gate that morning as her husband drove her to the airport.

I was left alone in the big house for the first time. I proceeded to start cleaning the house before Alhaji got back. I ran my hand across the silken cream curtains in the sitting room and went through the pile of CDs under the shelf carrying a big Sony TV which Alhaja loved watching when she was around.

I went through the CDs of Sunny Ade, Ayinla Omowura , Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, Haruna Ishola and there were also CDs of foreign musicians I had never heard of before with names like Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, Miriam Makeba and Angelique Kidjo all of which I found difficult to pronounce.

A bulky short speaker sat beneath the TV on the shelf and on it was a silver CD player. There was also a DSTV player and I watched many foreign shows with Alhaja when I was done with my chores. Alhaja would call me when the E! channel she loved started showing her favorite shows.

I would sit with her finding it hard to keep up with the white people as they spoke English in a manner that was too fast for me to comprehend. I enjoyed the shows and I would beam with delight happy that my boss treated me like her family member.

My eyes went to the framed pictures lining the wall and I saw a picture of a young Alhaja and her husband caught in an embrace in the front of a beautiful waterfall, white people captured at the background. There was another picture of the couple taken during their traditional wedding. Alhaja and her husband wore identical brown aso oke, she knelt in front of her husband who sat on a carved couple’s chair. Her head was bent towards him as he held her shoulders with a smile on his face.

I was sweeping the sitting room when Alhaji returned. His strong perfume clouded the room, the musky scent filling my nose.

“Welcome sir” I greeted him genuflecting and he nodded in reply.

I left what I was doing and went to the kitchen to get him water to drink. I was putting the bottled water beside the glass cup in the tray when I smelled Alhaji behind me. I turned to face him and was surprised to see him in his singlet and boxers. He had shed his guinea buba and trousers.

He reached for me as I stretched the tray towards him and he grabbed my wrists. The look in his eyes said he was not thirsty for water but something else. My heart pounded and blood rushed to my head. I tried to remove myself from Alhaji’s grip gently. The tray fell from my hand and the glass cup shattered, tiny shards scattering between us.

Jack273:
I'll be on the lookout for your mention

Okay!!

Jack273:
nahr

You're very good.

Thanks Jack! I am mentioning you in my next update for commenting first!

***

Present day


My phone starts ringing cutting through the harmonious sound of the rain jolting me from my thoughts. I reach inside my bag and bring out my phone. It is my husband and I let it ring. I don’t know what to say to him. I left home this morning without telling him where I was going to. The phone stops ringing and a text message buzz in.

“Where are you? I am worried.” It reads. “I am just somewhere I need to be, don’t panic.” I text him back.

I switch my phone off and standing up put it back inside my bag on the seat. The rain is drizzling already and the sun is peeping out lazily from the sky throwing its weak rays down to earth. Wandering across the room I move towards the window looking out to the vast space in front of the house where the children had been playing earlier. I bend down and move my hand to massage my knees which is already stiff from sitting too long. The rain starts suddenly increasing its tempo falling heavily the loud noise washing over me as I return to my seat.

*

Twelve years ago

The first thing I noticed as soon as I entered the big European style bungalow house that afternoon was the emptiness of the sitting room. The room was set in brown and cream decor, the large space in the living room bigger than my aunt’s and three other neighbor rooms combined. A huge ceiling fan hung from the ceiling whirling gently cooling the room. On the floor was a soft brown rug and my feet sank into it.

Standing beside my aunt and Lade that afternoon, we awaited Alhaja who had earlier informed my aunt who once worked for her that she needed a live in maid to take care of the house.

I smelled her before I saw her. Wrapped in a long lilac hijab, a beautiful buxom woman entered the sitting room from a bedroom tucked behind cream curtains. She called out sweetly to my aunt.

“Julie is that you? bawo ni? eku ojo meta, you have brought the girl I see. Please sit down” she said sitting down herself.

I sat down on a big plush brown couch that swallowed my butt. With my black polythene bag containing my personal effects clutched in front of me on my lap I looked at my feet. I was too shy to look at the woman in charge of this big heavenly house.

“What is your name?” she asked me smiling sweetly revealing small pearly white teeth and a dimple on her left cheek.

Alhaja as she was called was fair skinned and I was sure that if I moved closer to her I would see my reflection in her smooth creamy skin. Alhaja was as spotless as the interior of her sitting room. She and her husband had gone to mecca as a young couple and the title Alhaja and Alhaji accorded to women and men who had been on the holy pilgrimage was attached to the wife and husband respectively and it had stuck since then.

“Omolara ma,” I answered meekly raising my head timidly to look at her.

“How old are you?” she continued and I answered seventeen.

“Oh you are still a small girl. The last maid I had left to get married, I hope you can work very well” she said her smile still in place. I was astonished that this rich and beautiful woman was talking to me nicely. I answered in the affirmative that I could work.

“Okay you can start work tomorrow, for now just go and settle in your room” she replied.

What room? Was I to have a room all to myself in this lovely house? My jaw fell open in astonishment when my new boss led me to a room tucked in the last end of the house beside the visitor’s room. It was small but it was still larger than my aunt’s room. Lade looked at me enviously. I was going to have a room to myself in this beautiful house Alhaja was indeed generous.

She had already discussed the pay with my aunt. I was to be paid twenty thousand naira monthly. It was a lot of money. I had never in my life had that amount, even when my parents were alive our monthly income never amounted to twenty thousand. Since I would be able to get free three square meals and accommodation, I didn’t have to spend out of the money. The money would go to my aunt for safekeeping and a small percentage would go to her for maintaining the household.

I saw my aunt and Lade to the gate and my aunt looked at me in the eyes and said. “Work hard and don’t disappoint me, this is the only opportunity you have. Alhaja is usually nice but she doesn’t like people who lie and steal. Take care of yourself you can always come and visit us.”

I nodded unable to talk with the knot in my throat. The tears were starting to form in my eyes already so I turned my head downwards. Here I was in a strange place about to be left alone without any kin or friend.

I watched my aunt and cousin from the gate as they trekked down the long street to get an okada to take them back to their place. That night I lied on the soft bed in my new room and gazed at the ceiling for a long time not used to the new luxury, the ceiling fan rotating noiselessly.

***

Twelve years ago

My mother died shortly after my father leaving me an orphan with no family except my aunt whom I had never seen. She was my mother’s twin sister and she left the village when she was eighteen around the same time my mother got married. I couldn’t recognize her face and I had stared at the thin woman with bulging eyes and wide mouth when she showed up at my mother’s burial.
“You are coming with me to the city,” she said as I stood beside the grave weeping silently.

I had lived all my life in the village and for a very long time I thought that the city was a place with glistening roads that stretched on and on till eternity. A place where night never fell, where streetlamps turned night to day and gorgeous people strode about holding hands speaking fancy words which I was sure I wouldn’t understand.

To my disappointment, the sight that first met my eyes when I got to the city was a giant mound of rubbish sitting down solidly in front of a dingy apartment with several rooms one of which my aunt shared with nine other families. The smell from the rubbish always found its way to the room and the door and window were always locked leaving the room almost inhabitable. The smell was so repulsive that its occupants were always outdoors during the day returning only to sleep at night. It was in this squalor that I found myself in the April of 2010.

The day I arrived my cousin Lade my aunt’s only child had welcomed me as if I was a close family member. She had looked at her mother asking with her eyes where I was expected to sleep in the small room. My aunt had answered loudly in reply, “Omolara is only here to stay for the night, tomorrow she is going to start working at Alhaja’s house, you only have to create space for her on the mat tonight ehn”.

There was a tattered narrow mattress on the floor beside the mat and a sagging old brown couch was the only furniture in the room. The room was crowded with Ghana must go bags containing clothes, plastic buckets, bowls and a fat black water drum sitting behind the wooden door. A line ran through the length of the room sagging with the weight of clothes hanged on it serving as a kind of wardrobe for my aunt and her daughter.

That night I squeezed beside my cousin on the local raffia mat with my old ankara wrapper wrapped around my body mosquitoes buzzing around. Unable to sleep the memories of my parents death flash across my mind. If only my father had not fallen from the palm tree leading to his paralysis and subsequent death a month after, my mother would not have killed herself.

At first, everyone thought that it was the normal grieving process when my mother stopped talking to anyone. Then days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months and she still refused to speak. By then she had forgotten how to groom herself and had one time walked out of the house naked in broad daylight. People started referring to her as ‘alagoran’ a mad woman.

With no other relative in the village except me her daughter, the sole role of taking care of my mother fell on me. I did my best to make her appearance neat and never let her out of my sight. I would sit my mother on a low wooden stool in the raffia enclosed bathroom behind our mud house and scoop water with a small plastic bowl from a big stainless basin and wash her. I scrubbed her from her shaved head to her toes.

When I asked my mother to stand up she would only grunt in reply and turn her head to the side not bothering to look at me. I had broken down in tears on countless occasions pleading with her to say something to me even if she didn’t want to talk to other people.

A kind villager sympathized with my situation and she took me to Baba Awo the village’s priest. The old man consulted Ifa and went ahead to tell me that it was my father’s spirit disturbing my mother. He explained that they had sworn an oath that death could not separate them, wherever one went the other would follow. I had begged the baba crying on my knees that he should speak to my father to leave my mother’s spirit alone and let her remain with me here on earth.

Baba Awo told me he would offer sacrifices to appease my father’s spirit and my mother’s eleda to part ways and break the oath. The next day after the visitation I found my mother dangling by the neck from the big odan tree in front of our house. I remember the sudden lightness that swarmed my head as I started screaming for help that morning my voice piercing through the stillness of the village.

When the neighbors arrived, I was heralded away from the site by the women who had joined me in screaming while the men went in search of a ladder and cutlass to cut the body down with. The burial had been hush as my mother’s death was sudden and shameful.
She was buried in a shallow grave at the foot of the tree beside my father whose grave was still fairly fresh.

I remembered seeing everything but not taking anything in, the red mud of the freshly dug grave identical to my swollen eyes. That night the women kept vigil with me inside the house since I was now the only occupant. My mother had remained childless after giving birth to me, her subsequent pregnancies always ending in miscarriages.

Few days later my aunt arrived from the city and arrangements were made for me to leave with her.

Trickle of tears found its way down my chin and I sniffed gently not wanting to be heard above the loud snores around me. I turned on my side my wet cheek sticking to the mat.

Lade seemed unaware of my plight but she had been genuinely happy when she met me even though it was our first time knowing each other. She braided my unkempt hair into allback the next morning and insisted that her mother allow her accompany me to Alhaja’s house where I was to start working as a housemaid.