10 DAYS - Episode 9

DAY 3

Edisemi Thompson

My kitchen feels alien without Njideka. I take out the soup she made before we both went to her place from the fridge and nuke it. There’s semovita and poundo to go with it but simply because I don’t know how both are prepared I decide I’ll eat the soup like that, the way you’ll eat up a bowl of porridge beans. I tell myself that I never liked to swallow stuff with soup, but I smile at the recollection of the feel of rolling into little balls the last poundo Njideka had made. It felt immaculate as well sliding down my throat. My mom always said Okro soup made the swallow meal more of an enjoyment than work. She truly hated swallow meals. Njideka’s Okro soup was more than enjoyment, it felt like having uncountable rounds of sex with Butch in one night with the AC sweetly prickling the skin.

Now, about sex, Captain is still in bed in my room. I’m going to tell him he snored like a Hippo last night, forcing me to spend the remaining part of the night in Butch’s room. Correction please, Butch’s former room. I hugged his pillow tight and listened to the noisy old-fashioned AC hum angrily. It used to be the reason Butch always ended up sleeping with me in my room and having unplanned sex. I would always choose the fan instead of the AC in that room, but last night I found the AC useful in silencing Captain’s loud snores. Maybe not getting to change the AC was a blessing after all.

There was nothing enjoyable in what I had with Captain last night. If I’d had the idea and the equipment to run a drug test on him before the show started, I would’ve saved myself the torment I faced last night. It’s another thing I’ll have to tell him. How do you hump a lady for close to fifty minutes and still don’t come? And whatever happened to intense foreplay before sex…

I let myself slide back to the feel of Butch’s mattress on my skin. It’s softer than the one in my room and the bed has springs. We’ve made love on it only once, the bed squeaking at every thrust as if a co-partaker of the art. Squeaky Sex, Butch had termed it and I wonder how many Squeaky Sex he’d had with Julie while he was at home painting. I remember he’d smiled when announcing the name of what we’d just had on his bed. He’d suggested we had more of it and I declined, preferring the stability and noiselessness of my bed. I remember having thought then that I was scared of the bed crashing and sinking us in, but I’d actually declined because of the AC. The sound was insane.

If Butch had extremely enjoyed Squeaky Sex and you refused giving him more of it, he’d surely have had it with Julie more than once, because if he tells her he likes it, she’ll agree to have it more, because she likes him and would do anything he likes…

“Stop, don’t ruin my thoughts.” I say to my conscience and the empty kitchen.

You’re insensitive, Edisemi. You care only about yourself. It’s always you first and Butch later and no one else. You are terrible, terrible, terry…

“I think of others too. I gave Captain sex last night.”

Why don’t you ever say Captain gave you sex last night, as what you did was merely lie beneath him and stifle your moans. And why had you called Captain over for sex, if not because you wanted it. You, not him. Would you have given it to him if he had stopped by and gone on his knees to ask you for it?

“Does it matter?”

Does it then matter that Butch is having sex with Julie who’d never say she gave him sex, but that they both had sex because they both wanted it?

“Shut the fuck up!”

“PLINK!”

I jump. It’s the microwave. My soup is heated. I take it out and set on a tray, along with a bottle of water from the fridge and morning after pills from the drug cabinet.

But he didn’t come last night. You want to get rid of a semen that never got into you, just like you do those of Butch? You don’t give him a chance to make babies with you because you don’t want to have babies, right?

“We aren’t married yet. We can’t just have babies, yet.”

But he told you he’ll love to have you pregnant on your wedding day, and you were pretty sure you’ll marry him, and you know you’d have willingly accepted to fertilise his semen if you wanted to have babies. Why didn’t you tell him you both will be adopting babies rather than making babies?

“I owe you no answer to my wishes and desires, you’re just my foolish conscience. Get the hell out already and leave me alone.”

And it does, like it always does, only my morning is already ruined. The first spoonful of soup burns my tongue. I spit it out and gurgle a mouthful of water to heal the scalding tongue. I push the soup aside, swallow the water in my mouth and have more mouthfuls. Now, other raging thoughts slip in like thieves in the night. Something has to be done to Julie, and Butch, and Njideka. I’d called in Captain chiefly because I wanted to revenge what Butch did with Julie. I’ve read how friends slit their throats because their best friends slept with their wives. I hope to sit with a popcorn and bottle of Pepsi and watch it happen.

But I hadn’t enjoyed what Captain gave. It was a tormenting experience. He’d been rough and brutal and full of noise, and too big. He hadn’t bothered that sliding his truckload into me required patience, skill and tact. He just focused on getting the whole length of the monster into me. I’d stifled a million screams because his raping me was my own doing, my fucking wish for revenge. And he was taking forever to come!

I feel a spell of anger course through my body, juddering me in my chair. I replace the after-morning pills with pain relievers. I feel sore inside. I wonder how girls that shove cucumbers into their vaginas manage with themselves, and I think, the key is lubrication and gentleness. I had none of the combination or even a permutation of any of them last night. 

I swallow the pills and gulp water from the neck of the bottle.

“Bastard.” I say and march to the room, my Okro soup completely abandoned.

Captain turns in bed at the sound of the opening door. I watch as his somnolent eyes clear a bit as a smile begins to form from the corners of his eyes, stretches to the corners of his mouth and soon his face is transformed with it. It won’t take long for the eyes to completely take the brightness of the day. 

“You were awesome last night.” He says, sitting up and stretching out his arms for me to walk into. “Can we have one this morning as a reminder, you know I haven’t come yet?”

I fold my hands under my breasts, supported by a bra, as the gravity of Captain’s uselessness hits me. It occurs to me that I’d been twice as useless inviting him to share bed with me. His eyes rests on my breasts as if the padded cups of the bra had gone missing. My breasts feel heavier and the feeling of being assaulted rises in me like smoke through a chimney.  My anger rises with it.

“Come let me help with your bra.” He shifts forward on the bed.

Oh, he acknowledges there’s a bra after all, I think, and on the heel of that, he cares for a breast massage now, where is this new sexual knowledge coming from?

“Get right out of my bed and leave this place. It’s Monday, go to work.”

“No good morning kiss, no morning sex, no breakfast in bed?”

I’m almost shocked into a laugh. “What do you think you are to get these things?”

“The guy that gave you the best sex of your life.”

I cross the distance to him, I imagine my hair flying back and twitching fire if it wasn’t bound together in a hairnet.  I grab him roughly by the arm, my nail biting into his skin and drawing blood, and pull him off the bed. He comes halfway before mustering the strength to stand me off.

“I’ll fling you out through this window if you don’t get out of this place now.”

“Edisemi, what’s come over you this morning? If you don’t want me to fuck you this morning, why don’t you say it?”

“Don’t you ever make the mistake of saying you fucked me. I fucked you. Now get out of here before I fuck you up for real.”

“What is this?” He says and an interested smile takes over his face. He surely likes the direction this morning convo is going. I see why Butch is different from many men. He understands when I’m in a bad mood by just looking at my face and acts accordingly without any objection.

“You chased me out of my room last night with your snores, you rest all your fucking weight on me while sleeping and you stank like an excited pig. I’ve been having my bath since after the whatever we did and now I’ll have to take those sheets to the drycleaner.”

The emotion I’m looking for steals over Captain’s face, but steal is just the right word. It leaves as quickly as it’d come and in its sneaky fashion. A sleazy smile replaces it. My disgust with this man doubles.

“And there’s no name for the fucking I gave you. That’s what characterise a good fuck. Like, you attend a seminar and the orator blows your mind and you go wow, wow, wow, but when your friend can’t contain your excitement and asks what the orator had said, you just can’t remember the fuck what he’d spent six hours talking about. So, you tell her, ‘I can’t remember, but you should’ve been there to hear for yourself.’ You don’t think you’ve wasted your time not being able to explain a thing of the six hours you’d sat and listened and smiled… but you’ll attend the next time the orator comes for another seminar.

He’s smiling like he’s sharing the biggest truth about the world, like he’s wiser than the three wise men who’d discovered Jesus’ star. My palms begin to itch. It’s more because he’d found a cool way to cushion my verbal attack, than the actual anger of listening to him say the shit his mouth is full of. I want to smack the foolish smile out of his face.

“You know, that’s what these girls can’t explain. They can’t demystify how a fuck can be so good they’ve been running away from it. Like, a baby turning this way and that way when a spoon of sweetly prepared cereal is brought to his lips. The moment he eventually gets a taste of it, he opens his mouth wide for more and cries if it doesn’t come in time.”

“Captain, you’re a boy wearing the oversized body of a man. You don’t know anything. Maybe I should’ve bitten off your nose so you’ll know you’d been hurting me with your foolish thing.”

“Really?” He says and the smile is that of wondrous incredulity.

I can’t stand him anymore. I lift my hand to his face in a slap that should correct his ailing senses. He catches it mid-air and pulls me. I fall into him on the bed and my mind clamours rape. He grabs my other hand and holds them together in one hand, a prurient grin splayed on his face. He’s strong and I’m weak.

Your strength only resides in your mouth. Now what can the mouth do with your hands held captive? You’ll be raped like a hungry man does a juicy mango, and it’ll be nothing compared to last night. Haha.

I can’t shut the foolish voice in my head the same way I can’t stop Captain. I try to still my racing heart to a beat a second instead of seven a second and push all the fire in me through my eyes. I stare sternly at Captain and he stares back at me, the grin never leaving his face.

He’s a monster. You’d underrated him. Now you’re afraid of him and he smells it like monsters do. What can you do now, High and Mighty Edisemi?

Kick him, I can, but we’re huddled together on the bed. My legs are held tight between his legs. I feel his throbbing erection stiffening and stiffening. That one doesn’t ever stop stiffening. My heart goes berserk. It beats beat beats in no particular fashion and I wonder how long it’ll take before I break my calm.

Captain draws his face close to mine and I think, I’ll bite him if he tries to force a kiss out of me.  As if reading my thoughts (which is scary as hell), he moves his face below my face to my shoulder. Bite his ear, I tell myself. The ear is in view, but his eyes… those knowing eyes are on mine and I’m sure he knows exactly what I’m thinking. I fear he’ll hurt me more if I attempt to bit off his ear… and I might miss the fucking ear.

I stay still as he takes his face to my neck. He sniffs it and continues down towards my breasts, sniffing all the way. Now, he’s going to suck my breasts or what? 

He’ll have to unstrap your bra to do that and to unstrap your bra he needs his hand, which means he’ll let go of your hands.

Dumb fool, I almost reply out loud. He has my two hands in one of his and his other hand free. He’ll unstrap my bra with that hand and squeeze it whichever way he wants. He’s not going to be tender and romantic about it like Butch. He’s going to squeeze them hard and rough like a wet sponge. I will my breasts to prepare for the assault but my nipples coarse to little pebbles. I’m grateful to my padded bra. How’d this idiot interpret the wrong signal?

He sniffs my breasts and wouldn’t take his head away from there. I feel his eyes roving the mounds, tracing the start of the slope to the diminishing points where darkness takes over, the darkness of the black bra. My nipples grow harder in what should be discomfort. I pray he doesn’t pull down the cups of the bra and find the hard peaks of my breasts standing at attention to him. I become the small girl all over again whose dad would fondle her breasts and finger her in her sleep. The nipples would get hard, she’d moan and sometimes tug at his shoulder in what must be unconscious enjoyment, though her conscious self didn’t want it. Her conscious self knew it was taboo.

Captain takes his other hand to the bra. He squeezes my breast through it and although padded, I’m certain he’d felt the hardness of the nipple in that one hard squeeze. He starts to glide the hand into the bra then stops. He takes the hand and his head away from my breasts and once again is face to face with me.

“I’m a gentleman.” He says and his face dissolves into thoughtful sincerity. “I don’t rape ladies. I never had and never will.”

“But that’s what you’ve done. You did it last night, you’ve done it again now.”

“Go and relearn what rape is. I didn’t barge into your house last night. You called me over to fuck you. The shit was consensual. I know it’s your kind of lady that’ll go and share some twisted tale on twitter on how their boyfriend, who’d happened to give them the sex they want, raped them. I’ll ask Butch for your twitter handle.”

“Butch will be the first to know you raped me. You’ll regret you ever fell for this trap.”

“Really, is that what this is?”

Again, I don’t get the emotion I want. Captain’s smiling like this is just a game he’s in control of. As if he’s been here before and completed all the challenges with ease. We’ll see how this one goes, I say to myself. I always win.

“Now listen.” Captain adds pressure to my captured hands. “I came here with a hyped belief. Someone told me Bayelsa girls are good fuckers. You were nothing close to that last night. The lady in my house gave me a far better performance before coming here. You’ve got to prove your tribe true. I know you were trying to get used to me, so I won’t give you a score yet. When you call me next time, get all your routines ready. You’re going to ride me like a bicycle. Now that’s a Jesse Jagz line, but it’s good. We've got a deal then, right?”

I don’t know what to say, not because I’m out of words, but because of the gravity of his brazenness. It seem to me now like someone had removed the chip in his brain and replaced it with one programmed for sex and now it's on overdrive. I’ve never sat to talk with Captain for more than five minutes, which is the time required to say 'hi' and 'how are you and work' but I’m sure now that any discussion with him that stretches more than that time would stray to and completely border on sex.

“Silence can be taken as a yes, fallacy or not. Will be expecting your call.”

He frees my hands and gets into his jeans. I watch him dress, my heart recuperating from the fright of being raped. I think of Njideka and wish she'd swapped role with me. This is exactly what she needs for stealing Butch away from me. It occurs to me that a Captain-Njideka relationship could just be the perfect revenge on her I’ve been trying without success to plot. 

“By the way, you smell of me, right down to your boobs. I think the smell is thicker there, like the boobs had absorbed all of me. You can cut them off if you think I stink like a pig, unless you want to go about stinking like a pig.” Captain says, holding the door handle.

“Everything is funny to you now. In a matter or minutes, they won’t be, not anymore.”

“You’re making it sound like a threat, love. Try something else, threats don’t work on with.”

He blows me a kiss and exits the room. I stare at the door for long wondering why Captain isn’t scared of my threat of disclosure to Butch.

Think no more, your Highness. The reasons are at your fingertips, just snap them and they'll become unveiled. Well, you won’t do that so I’ll give you the reasons. 

1. Butch doesn’t give a shit about you anymore. You can go have bestiality with all the animals in the zoo, he won’t even pray you don’t contract something deadlier than AIDS.

2. Butch is a fucking pussy. You knew that right from the start. He’s lukewarm right to his will. He can’t and won’t think himself to even slapping Captain.

3. These guys have been friends since time immemorial, they’ve done several things together and considered it fun. Swapping girls is at the bottom on the list.

“Oh, fuck off!” I cry weakly and the first sting of tears assault my eyes.

I pick my phone and begin to text Butch. Halfway through, I delete it and then just stare at the phone.

I struggle with tears for a while then give in. It's always been easy for me to cry, and now I think calling Butch will be better. He’s never been comfortable seeing me in tears. It has always moved him. I pray it moves him to pick the knife and go to war in this circumstance.

©Storyestate

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