MALICE

I remember dialing'911'. All too clearly, I recall shaking like a featherless bird on a cold rainy morn. I still hear the chucked up sound the bullet made as it hit hard. I can still feel his lifeless body on mine. Just like yesterday, I can tell exactly how blood gushed from his throat, only I won't. I can still see the bedsheet soaked in thick red hemorrhage. I had killed him. I had murdered my very own father. But like lightening on that rainy morning the pain was lifted as soon as it came. I can still feet my feet go numb, lying naked beside the now polluted matrimonial bed that once was my parents'. 

Seconds... Minutes... Maybe hours.. They came for me. Their siren driving me to near madness. I was soon handcuffed and in my bloody state, driven to my cell. I recall being questioned time and time again, but no one had to know. No one. Mother had said that I was the heir now. She said it was my responsibility to uphold the name of the family. But she knew. She watched him torture me, and with tears in her eyes. She knew every bit of what happened. She had a very bad cancer, I knew that much. I reckon she explained that she couldn't please him anymore. Now and again, she'll call on me... She'll say she loves him and never wanted to watch him leave. She said I needed him as much as she did. So she let him have me. Again... And again... And again.... I was used to sustain the marriage. A marriage that had long fallen apart, only she couldn't accept it. 'No one must know', she would whisper after the torture. Now seated on this very floor, tears refuse to find its way down my cheeks, because even though my freedom has been snatched,in this cell I've found the freedom I've always sought,a place even he can torture me no more.

Okunlola Azeezat Olayinka_Zeeyola