Concealment (A short story)

SHARE THIS POST

 

 

 

CONCEALMENT (A SHORT STORY)

‘Like the rays of the sunlight, you colour my world….
Putting me in a trance from misery to ecstasy,
Melted by your love…for this day I am yours and you are mine;
though life had cheated me…’

Out of my mouth came these words as I held Abbey’s hands, caught between mixed feelings of love, nostalgia and downcast. My parents could not witness the day they have always told me to wait patiently for. My feelings were sour and accompanied by the whirling wind, so deem a night, desolate and dark. One could easily see the fireflies and hear the nocturnal bats echo. I turned, facing the window. The brightness of the moon could imitate the brightness of the diamond ring on my finger. It was just past 9:00pm, our wedding day. Not long, we were escorted home, a sub-urb of Ogba, Lagos state.

The memories hurt, remembering my parents being buried at our home town; Ede, a village in Osun state. Indeed, my world was torn apart. I was just 15 years old, with no other sibling, just one relative; popularly called madam Florence at Jakande area of Okokomaiko, Lagos state. She’s popular with her guest house business. Other family members decided I relocated to her place. She made my life look like a tragic whirlwind. She’d tell our olori-ebi; ‘Folake is doing fine and having a better life here in the city’. If maltreatment, starvation, molestation and exposition to prostitution was the definition of a good life, then the dictionary would have had a revised edition. A day did not pass by without the male genital organ seeing my nudity, an ordeal I struggled with.

Abbey was a different man. I thought I’d never love and trust any man again, but he was different. ‘Honey, what’s it, you were a thousand miles far away in thought. Tonight is our night, let’s make it happen’; He said as he made his way towards me. My tear drop fell on his hands as he tried to kiss me. I was in a dilemma whether to just tell him or keep it concealed. I hadn’t told him about my past experience on sensuality, it’s the only thing I made him bereft of. I made my way to the bed sitting at the down-side left of it. ‘Is there anything you are not telling me’, He asked inquisitively.

The words were lost in my mouth, I couldn’t find them, I couldn’t envisage how he’d handle it….Barely had I spoken, when he caressed me. The rest was history…

NB: This Short Story was sent in as an entry in the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Flash Fiction Contest.