They were a spicy, flaming item for most of a year, and had been merrily married for two or three months. She stirred awake in the dead of one night; his side of the bed was empty and cold. She crept down the stairs to look for him. He was nowhere, and the doors were all secure with the keys in place. She eyed the portal to his private room. The one he always kept under lock; the one she had never stepped into; not even to clean.
A sliver of multicoloured light is shooting out from behind the door. There is a chink in the doorway. What happens next all seems like a dream. A humming holds her mind and hauls her towards the door. There are candles everywhere: red candles, blue candles, white candles, big and small, ordinary and scented. There are also ginormous, grotesque masks. The room is swelling (and her head swirling) with hollow haunted chanting. A butt-naked man squats in the middle of it all. It’s her husband – the man she did not know!
P.S.: Totally true story; she filed for divorce.
My first reaction to this post was to laugh, but really it's no laughing matter at all, do we really know the people we think we know? and does that somehow buttress the argument that a year is too small a time to get to know and decide to marry a person ...or rather, marriage should not be rushed into?
ReplyDeleteBonsam!
ReplyDeleteThe fetish priest of the occult world. These kinds thrive in Ghana and many other oplaces in west Africa. Dangerous lot.
This happens in Nigeria too. But she already knew of the secret room. What did she think was there? Cotton candies? SMH..
ReplyDeleteFreaky! Is the poor woman ok?(like psychologically/emotionally?). Like all your other pieces, I can see the scene playing right before my eyes :)
ReplyDeleteOh wow. Did they have a church wedding? A (christian)traditional marriage? A court marriage or other?
ReplyDeletei like the way you write. im going to follow your blog :)
ReplyDeleteCynthia, equal numbers of long and short courtships have failed, so I think it has more to do with the particular couple than the 'sparring' time.
ReplyDeleteYes, Posekyere, Bonsam. Messing up the poor woman's life.
ReplyDeleteLol, Myne. I agree (and did when I first heard the story) that she probably saw the signs and wilfully ignored them.
ReplyDeleteBoth. A proper traditional marriage and a proper 'white' wedding too.
ReplyDeleteThanks, CB, I'm glad you found me. I'm following you too.
ReplyDeleteSo the guy is/was living a lie. Wow, just wow.
ReplyDeleteNana, every man has a secret, just that there are those like this one that are marriage breakers. Good she filed for divorce, you can never tell when he'll sell the family itself to the devil. And yes Cuz you write very well. Wrong profession?
ReplyDeleteRaine, wasn't the woman living a lie too? In the true-life version, he never left home for work. He would lock himself up in his private room for hours. But he had a lot of money, and she did not want to question its source.
ReplyDelete