FLOATING

Jun 20, 2020

I had just taken a good amount of pain relief and spirits and alcohol in an abusive way. It’s been two weeks. Two weeks since I got all of it from a local pharmacy. I read online that abusing pain relief mixed with alcohol and some illegal drugs could stop you from hurting. That was exactly what I wanted. I really want to end it all. This miserable life. Just yesterday, my phone had beeped with a credit alert of some millions of naira. I honestly don’t need it, I cant make use of it. I don’t want to make use of it.

It was sometime in September 2016, my mum had told me to meet her childhood friend who happened to be a senior professor in the school I was applying for my college. “Oh don’t worry, your admission is guaranteed. Come back on Friday with your credentials let’s see what you’ve got, your mum is like a sister to me afterall…” She had told me. I was barely 16years old.

Weeks later, I tried to tell my mum what her friend, the senior professor had done to me, had made me do but she was so engrossed in the new life she found herself. My mum and dad had divorced when I was a kid and it had always just been myself and her, she found a man around thesame time when I applied for my college admission so the day I planned to tell her was the day she introduced me to her new boyfriend. I couldn’t ruin it for her.

The senior lecturer, Dr Catherine had asked me on that Friday to slide my fingers in-between her legs. Taken aback, she told me it was a choice I had to make, an innocent choice with no implications. She told me of her husband and children studying outside the country, she said alot of things and then eventually succeeded in making me slide not just my fingers but my tongue in-between her legs. I never knew it was not going to be a one time thing but a continuous act.

Of course, I had spent hours in the bathroom washing and brushing myself after that Friday incident, I had barely kissed my secondary school girlfriend Sofiat, never touched her in the way Dr Catherine, my mum’s supposed friend asked me to touch her. So this thing I had done was an unforgiving offence. ‘Come back on Monday” she said after she came out of her office bathroom.

I knew I couldn’t bare to tell my mum, I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her. That Monday, my mum had told me the professor requested I come on Tuesday instead, the Dr knew how best to play her game, she was involving my mum in a way she knew I wouldn’t tell her. I was a naive 16year old boy. Months went by and the lust grew beyond just the service of my tongue and fingers. She had casually told me she wanted to see what was underneath the pant trousers she had gotten me in my first year at the college. Reluctant, I pulled it down a little so she could see, touch and caress. We were at her sitting room. And I lost it at that moment. I lost everything. She was a bit older than my mum, 5 or 6years it should be.

We shuffled her office, hotels in towns far from the campus and her house where I stay. “your boy should stay with me in my big apartment”. She told my mum and so I stayed with her all the while. She made me speak to her husband and two children that were older than me on calls once when she spoke with them.

She passed on a couple of weeks ago after she had suffered from breast cancer in months. I stood at the funeral but I wasn’t present. This woman laying innocently in her coffin had taken alot from me. She had wrecked my transition period of becoming a man. She had stolen all from me and until that moment, I didn’t really grasped to what extent she had ruined me. I once told my friends about it casually but they had instead praised me “Bad boy Collins. I wish I’m in your position right now” One of them said. And we never talked about it because I realised they only flaunted their stupid naiveness.

Last two weeks, her lawyer had called. ‘Hi, I’m I speaking with Mr Collins? The Dr had willed 5million in your name.” She said after a short conversation “You’d receive it in no time.” I was lost for words. “I don’t want the money” I responded but it was too late. The caller had dropped the call. I just want everything to end.

Hatred had swelled in me. How dare she even at death stalk me, act like she care, she had warned me against seeing me with other campus girls. Against so many things. How dare she? Barely two weeks of been promised millions of naira and 24hours of the huge amount in my account, here I am gulping down bottles of spirits and pain relief that had been staring me in the eyes for two weeks.

LEYEKROWN.

#fiction.