UNCOVERED

Alapa Peters

*****

“Deji! Deji!” The worried, fast, growing crowd outside, that had been pulled by his troubled wailing was asking him to open the door.

He hurried and opened it and stood there, crying, without noticing that he was nude. The crowd rushed in to fill its eyes with whatever it was that was happening. There was Tolu’s naked body looking as though lifeless. 

“She is dead” Emenike, a thin, round-headed medical student on the floor was saying, having confirmed that she was not breathing. 

Angry cries rented the air. And more and more persons kept coming and going, without a single soul caring to know how it all happened. Nor was Deji who was lost in his mourning outside asked for an explanation.

Porter Berlin had been called to the scene by one of the women who runs a kiosk in the hall. She went to Deji’s room and ran to Berlin crying with what she saw.

“Everyone out!” Berlin, on arrival, was shouting so loud and desperate that the nerves and vessels of his neck seemed ready to burst. But that was too late. Pressmen in the Hall had already captured the scene with their phones and were widely spreading the hot news across through various social media platforms.

He hurried down to where Tolu laid, pressed her chest a couple of times with his right palm and waited a bit.

“Not dead. She is breathing” he had crooked happily, his eyes for the first time sweeping through what lay before him. He pressed down what was rising in his trousers with his left hand. Emenike pulled back and disappeared. A cold expectant silence fell on the room.

In a moment Tolu coughed, and her eyes flipped slowly. The room was bright and filled with strange faces consuming her. It took a moment to get her bearing.

“My clothes” she had said eventually, trying in vain to cover her breasts with her palms.

The scene suddenly rolled off from mourning to something else.

“Her clothes” someone giggled

“Use the bedsheets to cover your… that…” another person offered, pointing at her region lushly darkened with shiny, dark, black hairs.

Phone cameras were still flashing around her.

“She is such a beauty.”

“Hot pant, I guess, you wanted to say.”

Berlin could do nothing.

Her clothes had been secretly thrown off down stairs in the heat of the situation, by a pressman, who had feared that her body could be covered any moment, hence depriving him of the opportunity to capture the news properly.

“Ha! Pastor Tolu” one student shouted in disbelief when he had caught sight of her, after struggling in the crowd. The crowd was immediately silenced with surprise and shock. Tolu shivered in humiliation, and began to cry.

“She is the leading pastor of my Fellowship…” the boy was saying, when some hands pulled him back and kept him shut.

“Where is the guy?” Berlin broke the silence that was already dying down with incoherent whisperings from different angles

“The play boy”. The crowd was shouting happily again, while making space for Deji to move in.

“He is a squatter, sir” said another person.

“Please dress her up quickly” Berlin had said to Deji whose face was bent down in regrets and shame. His maleness was rumpled and a bit shiny.

“Have yourselves see me before she leaves” he had added.

“Captain Berlin!” some students were hailing, as Berlin began to walk away.

“Captain! Captain!” The joyous shouts grew bigger and mightier.

“That’s her car, over there. That shiny, black, new Camry.” Another student had shouted after Berlin, who had stopped instantly, looked down, smiled, and waved back at the crowd.

“Fat tasking Sir. She has it…”