BURSTED

BY Alapa Odugbo Peters

“I have brought here some fruits in my bag”

“You did?” Deji had asked noncommittally.

“Sure. They are all yours.” Tolu had answered. They were speaking in unspoken words. He knew what she wanted.

But I told you not to come here again. Im tired of this whole thing”

“Why?”

“People are beginning to say nasty things around; and you may become pregnant”

“These aren’t things you should bother about. Im nineteen, old enough to take care of myself.”

She moved closer, pushing the pillow between them aside.

“Come on, don’t you enjoy me?” She had begun to pursue her point again having lost close to half an hour to a vain mission. Deji merely shrugged and said nothing.

“We are not dating. I only need you, just once in a while. There’s no need to be afraid about getting pregnant. I can always get some pills to flush it out, like most of my friends do”

Deji raised his widened eyes filled with shock to stab her.

“Ha! One clinic down the street of Agbowo empties the womb at the cheapest rate. Two of my friends were there last week,” she had added pleadingly even before a word could slip off his lips.

“But that’s murder.”

“Well, whatever you call it, it’s not deliberate. It’s taking out what is unplanned”

“But what if you die in the process” he had said, exposing his worried concern.

“At least by then my emotions are satisfied. Put death out of this!” her tone was rising. Deji kept quiet.

“Your roommates may soon return. Please come on” she was saying pleadingly, her irritation as clear as the darkness of the rainy cloud outside, that afternoon.

Deji pulled away from her side on the bed where they sat, when her hand landed unexpectedly on his maleness. He was tired of the unprepossessing game, yet his strength was disabled from pulling out. Tolu had all the wealth to have any guy she had wanted drive through her… All she needed was to talk, and willing drivers will appear from all directions, willing to give their services free of charge. He was calm, gentle, honest and responsible and had promised to preserve himself for his future dream which he had yet found, until Tolu slipped into his life and everything changed. She was the only girl he has touched in his life. And it was not because he had loved to, but because he had no choice. She had ever since leaned behind him, ruining the monstrous works of poverty from ruling his life.

“Deji” she had begun to say when his phone began to ring. Tolu unplugged the Techno K7, she had bought for him only a couple of weeks earlier, from where it was plugged, charging and gave it to him. He did not pick the call. When the phone rang and went dead, he switched it off instead, and dropped it on the red rug carpeted floor.

“Hey!” Tolu came closer unbuttoning her shirt to expose her oranges- their red, naked, succulent tips appealing for a suck.

“Baby let’s hurry. It’s about to rain outside. It always rains when we… That keeps the world from prying into our world…” There was a thunderbolt outside.

Deji rushed through her.

Slowly, dark clouds in the sky spread their skirts open, wider and wider, and soft rain began to fall. It started quietly and gently, caressing the warm air erotically, licking at the sides of the Great Independence Hall building, sucking at the soft grass, kissing all the dark corners. It was a hot rain, wanton and sensuous, sliding down slowly, slowly, until the tempo began to increase and it changed to a driving, pounding storm, fierce and demanding, an orgiastic beat in a steady, savage rhythm, plunging down harder and harder, moving faster and faster until it finally exploded in a burst of thunder. Suddenly, as quickly as it had started, it was over.

Drained, Deji rolled down to her side slowly, as if wishing not to.

“Tolu” he had said softly. His mouth curled up in a small smile.

“Hope, it was sweet.” He struck her nipples calmly.

Silence.

“It’s over. I don’t like the way you’re lying down.”

No reply. Her eyes were shut. She had fainted in the middle of the road. Deji had not noticed and so drove on.

“Tolu” he had begun to shake her shoulders lightly, his heart pounding rapidly with fear.

“Jesus! Tolu! Tolu!” he was now shouting.

“Lord!” His eyes began to rain.

“Why?” He rubbed his hand through her chest hurriedly, which was something he would have gladly left for his mouth to do unhurriedly on an ordinary day. She was not breathing.

“Jesus! Tolu is dead. She is gone” he had begun to shout uncontrollably, confusedly over her body.

“Why did I do it? I had a feeling that this will come to a bad end. Mummy, poor you, killing yourself in the village to give me life, I am a huge disappointment, a huge shame and failure!” He sat down, weeping his eyes out.

“Am dead! Am gone! Oh yes, I am!”

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

He had hurried to the door, opened it and stood there nude, crying, without noticing that he was nude.

“I am dead! I am done with!!”

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, tall, broad-shouldered and dark in complexion, had been called to the scene by one of the women who runs a kiosk in the hall, who having herself been to Deji’s room had ran to Berlin crying with what she had seen.

“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 had hurried down to where Tolu laid, pressed her chest a couple of times with his right palm, fixed his ear to chest 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. It took a moment to get her bearings.