Before the sun set (short story)

This work is a pure fiction. All names and resemblance to either the living or the dead are just coincidental to the imagination of the author. The use of this work without the permission of the author attracts legal actions.
©Azeezat O. Adekanye
2017
Dedicated to all rape victims. It is my prayer that the Lord heal you completely. Amen.
One,two,three…She carried her legs as fast as she could. Her assailant was fast approaching,that she knew. The cold night was not helping matters and the ruffling of the dry leaves is giving her away. She knew it was only a matter of time before he caught up with her. Nonetheless,she was not going to give up.
All her thoughts vanished as she felt an hand grabbed her from behind. Her mind went blank as if a tsunami occurred there. She had already closed her eyes in anticipation for her assailant’s next move but she found herself opening them again to stare at the reality.
Shock.
Awareness.
Pain.
They came in sequence.
She looked at the figure in front of her from the feet to head and the only word that came to her mind was ‘gruffy’. One look at the man spelt out evil,in all ways. The redness of his eyes like a burning flame,the ‘artificial dreadlocks’ making him look like a schizophrenia patient. His fingernails were like a lion’s claws.
However,what caught her attention was the glittering metal that was dangling from the man’s hand. He knew she knew he was up to no good but she had no option but to succumb. He raised the knife up as expected with a wicked grin on his face. A mere glance at his dentition can make one lose appetite. She was at his mercy-that she knew.
He traced the edges of her shoulder with his knife and that sent cold shivers to her body. Suddenly,with an accelerated force,he pushed her to the ground with the metal still in his hand. Balancing himself on top of her in the roughest manner one could ever imagine. He tore away all her clothing and within the blink of an eye,she was just like Eve before she ate the forbidden fruit. Then he spread her legs wide apart and forced himself in.
With each t----t coming with more force,the pain was excruciating. Despite all her pleadings,he was still insouciant. He could feel the blood gushing out yet he didn’t stop,he only continued inflicting the pain on the helpless girl. The tears she had shed in that short period of time was already more than twice the size of an ocean. So much tears wasted over nothing. It got to a point that she couldn’t feel the tears anymore and she just laid down while feeling and watching her life shatter into pieces.
Brutal was an understatement to qualify how he raped her.
Eventually,when he was through,he rose and took another look on the girl who is dying. Then,he turned to the other side and left.
Few minutes after he had left,she knew she to leave too but how? she had wondered.
How?
He had wanted to molest her to death and looking at her situation now,maybe he is going to succeed. Who knows? He had already succeeded in sapping out all the energy and strength in her. She could not even call for help. She could feel her breath seizing. It was pure agony. She tried to stand but her strength failed her. So,she resorted to another method which was dragging. She dragged her unclad self on the floor at few minutes interval because the dragging even seemed like an herculean task.
‘One last time’ she thought. It was glaring for the blind to see and a way too audible for the deaf to hear that wherever she was planning on going,she cannot make it there- her house. She had not wanted anybody to see her in that condition but what dignity was she keeping? The one somebody came and left with just like that? She heard some footsteps coming towards her and heart beat nearly failed her. What if he came back with reinforcement to fulfil his mission?
‘Well,that would be better’,she thought. She closed her eyes in readiness to embrace death.
As the footsteps became closer,she thought about how broken her mum would be when she finds out about her death. She had always been the pride of her mum. Where was God when she needed Him most? He just sat down where He his when all that her mum and her ever did all their lives was to worship Him.
The beam of light reached her face and slowly it roamed over her body.
‘We have found her’. A voice shouted. That was all that she heard before she drifted into unconsciousness. The owner of the voices were one of the groups of the search team in her neighbourhood. Her mother had been worried when she had not seen her when it was getting late so she beckoned on some of their neighbours and they formed search teams. They rushed to her side and carried her to the hospital.
The noise in her head woke her up. She opened her eyes to scan the environment she was. It was blurry at first with her head threatening to explode if she tried it.
A bruised body.
An excruciating pain in the lower region of her body.
A throbbing headache.
An high temperature.
What else?
It was an hospital and it looked as if she was on treatment. ‘What happened?’ ‘Who brought her here?’ were the various questions going on in her head. Just then,an image flashed through her head and she remembered everything. She did not know what to do at that point in time. She desperately prayed that it was a dream but the bruises on her body and the pains said otherwise. It was too much of a cross to bear.
The door flung open and the person who she assumed was the Doctor entered with her mother following closely behind. She stole a quick glance at her mother and noticed the look of hope on her face.
‘Yewande,it is good to see you awake. How are you feeling now?’ The Doctor asked.
‘It’s been how many days’ Yewande replied making it sound like a statement rather than a question.
‘Three days’ the Doctor replied again.
Three days? For three days she was battling for her life all because of one irrational human being pleasure. Three days of uncertainty. It was even better off if she had died. What dignity does she have left? What image was she trying to protect?
While all these were going on in her mind,she did not know that she had been shedding tears. The mother on noticing this quickly rushed to her side in a bid to comfort her. ‘My daughter, you don’t have to cry…’
‘I was not crying, look at me, I am smiling’. She said while she opened her white set of teeth revealing a small dimple on her cheeks. She continued smiling until she took a step forward by laughing. She laughed and laughed until the tears started pouring again and this time, she could not stop it. She was laughing hysterically at a moment and just like a flash, she felt hot tears streaming across her face.
‘Mum,it hurts so much. So, so, so much. How did it happen? He did not have an iota of mercy upon me. Mum, he degraded me, downgraded me, belittled me, ripped me off my dignity, made my whole existence a sham, made me experience hell on earth…’ She continued blazing in an ear deafening tone.
The Doctor signalled to the mother to let her be. Perhaps she just wanted to let it all out. She just kept patting her daughter’s back to calm her down as her noise were affecting other patients in the hospital.
The gruesome images flashed through her memory again and this time, the ache on her head was intensified. ‘Mum,I am going to that our house in Lekki’. She said. Her mother looked at her as confusion registered on her face. She looked at her closely again and she saw that she had stopped crying.
‘When?’ She asked again and that jolted her out of her reverie.
‘What are you saying,we don’t have a house in Lekki’. She replied still thinking on how to figure out what suddenly came upon her daughter.
‘Really? I thought we had. But what if our ancestors have an uncompleted building there? You know, we could go there to organise feast for the people there. Let us invite Michael Jackson…’ She continued rambling until her mother realised what was happening.
‘Doctor!!!’ She shouted at the top of her voice and in a few seconds,some nurses surrounded her while some tried to restrain Yewande from standing up from the bed. The ward was in ruckus. They were even oblivious of the presence of the Doctor until he stated in an audible voice that they should move back. With just two nurses holding her, he injected her and almost immediately, she fell asleep.
The Doctor told her mum to follow him to his office. He led the way while she followed like a rat drenched in rain. She was yet to recover from the shock of what happened in the ward earlier.
‘Is she losing her mind?’
‘Has she lost her mind?’
Her thoughts were cut short as she did not realise that they were already at the Doctor’s office. She had a lot of questions running through her mind but she asked the one closest to her mouth first.
‘What is happening?’ She asked.
‘Well,it is nothing serious. The shock of what happened was too much for her to bear. It was just a brief mental disorder caused by shock. She’d be stable by the time she wakes up but there is a probability that when she wakes up,she’d go into depression. So, you need to be with her at all times and if possible,see a psychiatrist or a counsellor. That’s all’, the Doctor concluded.
‘Thanks’ she replied and walked out of the office looking dejected.
A brief mental disorder?’ The words of the Doctor kept ringing in her ears. The Doctor had just said it as if it was nothing.
Nothing serious.
She walked back to the ward to take one last look at her daughter. She entered the ward and found her daughter sleeping soundly. But was the sleep sound? When she wakes up to the reality, would it be the same again? She touched her tender light skinned face and she mentally cursed the being who turned her daughter’s existence into this.
She had never envisaged this kind of situation in their lives at any point in time. Who even does that? She thought as she smiled sadly. You cannot possibly be going about with a negative mind, positivity is the key but what happens when an unexpected situation happens? Well, take life as it comes like they say and she was going to do just that. Whenever her daughter wakes up,the next line of action would be known.
Pretty face, chubby cheeks, naturally long eyelashes, long dark shiny hair, nice dentition, dimples to die for and a light skin which was an added advantage to complement her beauty. Yewande was a living proof of pulchritude at its peak. The Angel in charge of her creation had done an extra work by adding a very perfect special touch to her creation. She was beautiful and it was glaring.
Her mother left the ward gently so as not to wake her up. She was met by two of their neighbours who had come on visitation basis to Yewande. If there was anything Yewande’s mum detested so much, it was pity. But right now, the looks plastered on their faces screamed just one thing and that was pity.
‘How is she doing?’ The first woman asked.
‘She is fine and stable for now’ Yewande’s mum replied.
‘Can we check on her?’ The other woman asked and Yewande’s mum replied in the affirmative. She led the way and they followed closely behind her. They got to the ward and they found her sleeping. After waiting for few minutes, they rose to take their leave. The first woman turned back and squeezed her hand in a bid to say ‘All will be well’ and they left.
*****************
Few days later, Yewande was discharged and just as the Doctor had rightly predicted, she was depressed. This was the worst stage of her life. She would just stare blankly into space and spoke few words. Even the few words she spoke were spoken whenever she was being spoken to. All the intake of her food were always returned to the sink in the toilet. Both mother and daughter emaciated. They were the direct opposite of Micah Stampley’s ‘Heaven On Earth’. It was ‘Hell On Earth’.
The mother returned one day after going out to book an appointment with a counsellor only to find her daughter missing.
She combed the entire house in search of her daughter all to no avail. She was about to call for a search team again- the second in a week when she found a weird looking envelope on the floor. She looked at the end product of a tree lying at the other edge of the centre table and moved closer to the object that was not there the day before. She hesitated before moving closer to the table. With a trembling body, she moved closer to the table to confirm whatever is in the envelope. She shuddered in fear as she remembered the Dele Giwa issue but shook the thoughts away from her mind. A man dies once. She picked up the envelope and discovered a letter was in it and it was addressed to her. She could recognise the handwriting anywhere in the whole world. It was written by the one person in the universe who could address her as ‘Dear Mother’.
Dear Mother,
I did not mean to let it happen this way but it cannot be changed. Mother, I was just tired, I was fed up. I was tired of the look of pity everyone was giving me including you too, Mother. It was not my fault that a calamity befell me, was it? Everybody was sounding notes of warning to their children at my own detriment.
‘Tola, if you do not want what happened to Yewande to happen you, listen to me…’
Mother, does it really have to be like that? My heart was burdened, I felt my whole world crashing and no one seem to care. I felt guilty. I felt I was taking the whole blame for whatever happened.
If I had stayed, I would still be suffering in silence and nobody would know. I doubted it if everything was going to be same again. Words cannot really express how I feel. Is it the constant nightmares? The air passing through my legs every time to remind me of what happened? Or the throbbing pain accompanied with it? I hear those sounds everyday. I hear the voices now and then. I still the flicker of light being flashed through my face. I will never forget the chilly weather that night. The muffling of the dry leaves, the creaking sound of the animals, the grip, virtually everything. Everything. At times, what I needed was someone to tell me ‘God loves you’ but everyone was too immersed in self-pity that they did not know what always happen behind closed-doors.
I wish I could turn back the hands of time, then it would be the time I was coming to this world and I will tell God not to allow this kind of situation to happen to me. It was more than I could bear. The weight was too much and I was already suffocating. I couldn’t keep up with the motion so I just gave up. I gave up everything since it is useless for me to stay anyways. The fact that I would not be around is irrelevant and I am certain that only few people will miss me. It is one thing to be void of emotions, it is something else to be feeling empty. The latter is what I feel. It feels like value has gone out of me and the worth is no longer there. I could not lift my head among my peers anymore even though I really wanted to. I, that was the cynosure of all eyes and prided myself among my contemporaries now became more or less a subject of ridicule. I, that was once the role model of the young ones now became the one parents are using as an example to them because of somebody else’s pleasure. I cried and cried till tears could no longer come out so I watched till my whole heart was completely shattered into pieces.
Mother, just like I’ve said, I never wanted any of these to happen but probably it was destined to happen in that way. I am so sorry. Check the back of the banana tree at the backyard, you’d see my body there that’s if the animals are not too fast. Please live a good life without me.
Your daughter,
Yewande.
Like a rabid dog, she ran to the backyard and true to her daughter’s words, she found her lying helplessly on the ground. She prayed as she moved closer to the body that she should just be unconscious and not dead. She got there, knelt beside her, checked her pulse and she knew.
She knew she was gone.
Gone.
She felt her tears fall. ‘What is a good life without you?’ As if compliance with her thoughts, she felt her heart tighten and her breathing ceased and in a matter of seconds, she was gone too.
THE END.
To all victims of rape, may the Lord heal your broken heart completely. Amen
#Saynotorape