Dangerous Love - Episode 1

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      "You can't kill the Bogeyman"

                                                  -Halloween (1978)

The bogeyman is coming!

And it’s creeping too.

I closed my eyes tighter trying to block the sound the door made as it creaked open.

It’s in my room!

My mind lit aflame as I heard its wheezing breath within the tight confines of my room.

“Here kitty kitty” it said with a leer.

Oh no.

It advanced further.

Further.

Further.

I curled tighter into a ball where lay.

Bogeyman’s rough calluses scraped my right cheek as it caressed it in sick affection.

I tried to scream but no sound came.

I tried to get up but by sinewy muscles failed me.

Paralysis!

No . Bogeyman stay away

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. I screamed inwardly willing it to disappear from my room.

I shut my eyes tighter.

“Look at me honey” it said.

I shut my eyes tighter.

Look at me! Look at me!! Look at me!!! It screamed.

I felt its hands prying my eyes open.

It was.

It was.

A clown.

But this was no ordinary clown he had an axe buried in his head and had bandages wrapped all over his neck like a swaddling babe.

His eyes roving madly and from his long ears a very large snake slithered out and plopped on my chest.

It coiled on my chest and bared its fangs at me flicking its tongue.

The clown brandished a knife and proceeded to stab me.

The snake bit me.

The clown stabbed me.

I screamed.

Then I did no more.

 

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Mrs. Odunuga slowly raised the wine glass to her mouth and took a sip from the red wine she had been offered and placed it on a low stool beside her.

Anyone watching Mrs. Odunuga may have accused her of being coquettish.

Her friend and host, Mrs. Williams continued to regal her with the story of the party she attended two weeks ago. The wealthy groom and the surplus food.

She gesticulated animatedly the number of cars and caravans that carted the party goers to the reception.

The glam.

The expensive hall.

Mrs. Odunuga sighed and murmured in concordance. The Yorubas sure knows how to throw an elaborate party.

“How much is the voile lace?”  Mrs. Odunuga asked.

“one hundred and twenty thousand” Mrs. Williams answered  beaming brightly. Her nephew was tying the knot the next month and she had invited her best friend, Bimbo to come grace the event with some of her other wealthy friends.

The one  percenters.

Bimbo Odunuga transferred the money to her using her mobile banking app and they resumed their discussion with Chief  Ebenezer Obey’s song cooing softly from the home theatre system.

“Thomas is cheating again” Elizabeth announced suddenly looking on sadly and stirring her drink perfunctorily.

Uh oh.

Bimbo thought.

Here we go again.

“Don’t they all……. cheat I mean” her husband, Femi was also a womanizer and she had caught him with lots of concubines that she had lost counts of his mistresses. But before she did the number had been nineteen.

Nineteen girls. Oh. He favored girls; young girls in their twenties.

“I’m tired of this marriage” Elizabeth mumbled and began to sob; her husband’s promiscuity had always been her albatross in the loveless marriage she and her husband, Thomas was entwined in.

Bimbo quickly consoled her and assured her of using her resources to find the gold digger and make her pay.

Thomas had said to his defense one time Bimbo had confronted him about his promiscuous inclinations that, as a doctor, a gynecologist, he had a lot of temptations to face from the feminine counterpart that sought his expertise and he had had a duty to the universe to provide his “service” to any woman in need of his services.

She knew he was not talking about the expertise he spent seven years to get in the University of Lagos. No. she understood the “services” he meant. Thomas was an Adonis, a very handsome man that sure would get any woman to swoon.

His fair complexion, blue eyes, muscular and altitudinous physique, his perfect dentition, all this was sure to make any woman fall in love with him on first sight.

And it does help too that he was he head of the gynecology department in the big private hospital where he worked.

She had disliked him when he was still courting Elizabeth. But her friend would have none of it.  She professed her undying love and assuaged her he was a good man.

Bimbo had identified him for what he was, a do no  gooder and she had not stopped disliking him especially after what he said after she had confronted him as to the reasons for his promiscuity in his office one sunny afternoon after her friend had called her and  announced that she was filing for divorce

“I’m sorry Bimbo I have to lend my service to the universe when it’s in need. I’m sure your husband too will understand” he said with a sneer.

She reprimanded him for his flippancy and warned him not to break her friend’s heart again as Elizabeth was set to pack her things and file for divorce after she had caught him red handed for the umpteenth time with another of his young mistress.

I’m sorry Bimbo I have to lend my service to the universe when it’s in need. I’m sure your husband too will understand.

She had found the statement unprofessional and did not tell her friend who she begged not to leave her husband’s house and leave her two daughters to a grim fate.

She can never forget the feeling she got when she had left Thomas’ office, the feeling of the walls of his office crawling on her skin.

Yep. Thomas was a creep who deserved to be sent to the second circle of hell in Dante’s depiction of hell.

The special ring of hell dedicated to lust.

I’m sure your husband too will understand.

Yes he sure will as he also was a shameless adulterer like him.

She married Femi despite the staunch disapproval of her parents who had identified the cockish twenty seven Femi as a misfit  for her and she, blinded by love had saw her parent’s intuitions as  baseless and unfound.

What is it with love and misplaced trust?

Her.

Elizabeth.

They had both fallen for wolves in sheep clothing that had presented themselves demure and had transmogrified into a hideous monster immediately they had secured their hands in marriage.

Or was it before the marriage?

During the marriage ceremony?

She remembered the rumors she had heard about the raunchy bachelor’s eve her husband’s friends had organized for him.

She had disbelieved them. She wanted the stories to be false.

It had to be false.

Or was it before the marriage?

She should have recognized the “minor” infidelities of Femi during their courting as the writings on the wall.

She forgave him and believed he was a good man who had fallen off the wagon and was truly penitent for his impropriety.

She had to believe him.

She loved him.

And damn! He was a lawyer.

A very good lawyer. Who had the sleek and highfalutin manner of talking and turning himself into a pariah being crucified for something he had no control of.

She always fell for his bombastic speech. That was before she recognized the trend after the nineteen as the mannerism of a good defense attorney.

Her phone rang, terminating her reverie.

It was an unknown number.

“Hello” she ventured cautiously remembering the various horror stories of people who had fallen willy-nilly for fraudulent schemes on the phone.

“Hello, is this Mrs. Odunuga?” a gruff voice asked

“Yes?” she replied flatly.

The man’s next statements brought fear to her heart.

“What?!” she screamed.

Elizabeth shaken out of her despondency by the urgency in Bimbo’s voice inquired the reason as to her alarm.

No!  Bimbo thought.

No, this can’t happen to me!