ONE: Unwilling Bride...

NIGHT HAD JUST FADED. Daylight was slowly approaching in the  form of dawn when the phone rang delivering  news that would shatter me for the rest of my life.  He had not disclosed the news to me but somehow  I knew what it was all about. I  stood there shocked, in tears and disbelief. My weakly trembling legs failed to support my body. I was struggling to breath as I tried my best  to comprehend  his words. They felt surreal; as if this all wasn't happening and I had just hallucinated it all. I paced back leaning on the cold counter for support. No! This can't be happening, it can't. I thought to my self. How could Destiny  have played such a cruel joke on me? She was my everything, the only hope for me out of this prison i called a marriage. She had made false promises of an escape from him. From his life, from  his family but she had went ahead and broken that promise she had made to me.

"She said she would save me, she said she would save me!" I cried to my self. 

"Whats that woman?" He asked me absent mindedly. As if he cared to begin with. 

"These days you just mumble nonsense to yourself ha? I might need to get you checked out at the local mental assylum!" He laughed as if what he said was funny. He expected  me to react in a similar  way. "Make shure not to mumble things to your self in public,  or you might embarrass  me!" He roared in a cruel tone. He looked away form me and rubbed his face with his chubby hands. His belly was bulging, almost showing beneath his shirt. He was almost in his mid forties. I cringed at the thought that every single night, this disgusting  cruel man touched me. The memories  of him running his filthy hands on my breast, my hips, my body were still vivid in my young  mind. I fought to keep them at bay by all means and I cringed everyday the sun set and I would prepare him food and let him lay next to me. In the same room, in the same bed, next to each other with him doing who knows what he would have thought of doing to me that night. 

"What is it?" I asked him in a  nervous state. 

"What is what?!" He asked coldly and in a rude way as if I had just interrupted him doing something he hated to be disturbed in the middle of. 

"What's is the phone call about!? What i mean to ask is it the hospital? What did they say?" 

"Well for starters, " he began. "I would have told you its none of your business but it's actually  your business I guess." He went on. 

I found my   self unable to  fathom  these very words he uttered next. They kept on ringing in my head. "It's the hospital," he continued.  "Your sister passed away this morning." 

"What?!" I said as I collapsed  sitting on the floor. I started to cry loudly in a state of shock. "She can't die!" 

"Well she is a gonner now.  And stop crying now, the neibours will think I'm beating you again and they will start knocking on our door to complain  and to find out if you're okay." Was all he uttered as a form of consolation. I ignored his rude comments. 

"You always have a way of making me look like the bad husband, don't you?" He said in a low voice.

"She can't die, she was my only hope!" I said as I continued to cry my eyes out. How could she have left me with nothing in the world except this   cruel man.  How was I going to free my self from  this ugly union?

"Shes dead, deal with it, the sooner you come to peace with this, the better it will be for you!" He said in a cold tone. "And what hope are you talking about?" He asked me with a hint of anger in him. He always felt anger when I showed  any slight dislike for him. I sat leaning on the couch  on the floor  whilest   hugging my knees  in desolation. 

"What will I do now? What do I do?" I said to my self. 

"Ah, I see, you are still under  the impression  that you still going to get away from me? If that's so then i would  suggest you get rid of your filthy thoughts. I am your husband now! You can't get rid of me that easily!" He raged as he pierced me with loathsome  eyes. Deep dark murderous  eyes. I shuddered at the sight of him.

"Remember, your dead daddy  owed me what he failed to pay back and you  are here to repent for his sins. Remember that!" He said as he chuckled in a deep voice.  

"Please let me go! I will find a way to pay you back!" I found my slef begging at his mercy. "Sir you have a lot of money, my dad owed you little and I'm sure it wasn't enough to inconvinience you so much. What I mean is I will try to pay you back?" I heard my self say. 

"Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars! Acania. Two hundred and fifty. Its not a lot of money to you?" He paused for a reaction from me.  But i neither said nor did anything. "Okay. Can you pay me back that amount? I mean if your father couldn't  how are you going to do it?" He asked me with a mocking expression  on his face. He smiled when I did not answer. 

"You don't allow me to work!" I said. I had stopped  crying. 

"Even if I did will you be able to earn that much money for me?"  He asked me. Was he actually  willing to reconsider?  Would he let me work to repay him and then divorce me? I longed for my taste of freedom. 

"Yes please, i will try sir!"I pleaded. 

"Sir? I'm your husband, why call me sir?" He was sitting on the couch in front of were I was sitting whiles looking me in the eyes. One of his legs was almost in kneeling position. 

"Okay, if you can earn that much in one month then maybe in will reconsider" he said in a mocking tone. I wouldn't have been able to make that even in a year. He was making fun of that fact!

I stated to cry again.

"Come on, dont start crying now! Your whole family is now dead and you  have got no body  else besides me.  I'm your only hope!" He looked men in the  eyes. "If you divorce me then how will you survive you got no college education. You have no job, neither the experience!" He said.

"I wil survive just like how anybody else is! Do you think I need you?" I aksed him confidently. 

"Well then..., leave!" He motioned with his eyes for me to get out the door. I wasntnplanning on coming back even though i did not know anybody in this city or have any were else to go. As soon as I stood, he also stood up. I walked towards the door and as  I opened it, he shut it in my face. "You're going no where! Dont ever embarrass me by thinking you can get away from  me." He banged me against  the concrete wall of the hotel room.  "You are jothing but pathetic and im bvery glad you sister took her last breath on this earth. She will no longer be here  to instigate  you against me!" He said with his eyes full of hatred.  There was so much darkness in his soul. They always said the eyes are the windows to the soul and if I had possessed  such  zeal  in me as much as the hatred I saw in his eyes, who knows what I would have become of me.

He paced back a few steps took the receiver from the kitchen counter  and  he placed it  back on the phone and continued munching on his sandwich  as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. He then gave me a  smirk and then he continued

"Since you wanted to leave my place  so bad, you can go as soon as I'm done with you. When I don't want you anymore!" I paced back as rage streamed within me to the core I thought I was going to go mad and lash out at him but no. I didn't. Now adays, I had learned to control my temperament. I ran up the stairs  to the bedroom and shut the door behind me. How could  he? Take advantage  of  the situation  to poke fun at me, my helplessness, my desire to be away from him,n my sister's death. 

To make fun  of the fact that I had no family left and no we're else to go. I sat on the bed lamenting his cruel unforgiving ways. His harsh tone. His lack of empathy when it came to anything that had to do with me. He was a bomb waiting to detonate when ever I made one simple  mistake or when ever he felt I was vulnerable.

I held my head in my hands and bitterly wept. I had nobody  else. All the people  I loved and cared for were no longer in this world. 'If only I had not asked him then I would have never found out. I would still be hanging on to the hope that my sister  was still alive fighting for her will to live, i would  still have hope that  one day,  she would walk in, her favourite  yellow dress flapping in the fresh  breeze that blew in when ever one opened the entrance  door to the gigantic  apartment back in our  home country and tell me; 

"Acania,  let us get out of this place, it's been to long you've lived with this cruel and  vile monster," but  no, she had to give up when I needed her so much. She had to let go of our life. The one  she had planned for us if i left that pace. If only I had not known, I  would be in a better state of mind right now.' I would still have hope, '  I thought  to my self. I was distraught.   I was filled with regret. Finding out that some of my   family had perished in a car accident was the most devastating  thing to ever happen to me in my whole 20 years of life, but receiving  the news of my sister's death broke me to pieces. Considering I was about to run away and  leave him, to return to our home. I had hopes she would be  awaken  from her comma so I prayed for her everyday. I missed my whole dead family.  I longed to see their faces. My father, with his sombre and  calm aura. My mother,  a bubbly and talkative persona. My quiet and kind brother.  Last but not least my sister Arora. My sister had just recently completed her university studies. She had dreams. She had ambitions   that died with her. I felt a sort of pain and sadness in my heart every time I thought  of her. She had just gotten  a job  offer from abroad. She said she  would work in Paris for a prestigious company. My parents were happy, so was I. On that day, that fateful tragic morning  I woke up  sick. My sister Aurora was supposed to leave for  her work. I remember  the whole house was lively . Even though it was only the six of us including my cousin Claire. I lay in bed ailing away while  my favourite cousin took  time  out of her precious  busy day to   take care of me and i guess that is how destiny spared  both our lives.    I guess fate wanted it to be that way. I remember  gazing in to Aurora's eyes that day weeping I was saddened by her depature but I felt  part of urging me to hang  on to her because I would never see her again. Claire clung to me as I let go of Auroa in a state of sadness. I was distraught. We had  never  been separated before and this was a painful moment for the both of us

 

 A tragedy  that would soon  change both our lives befell  and we would both soon learn our family had a fatal accident whilst accompanying my sister to the air port. I became  an  orphan  that day, the last hope for me to what one can call 'family' lay in the hands of those I deemed well wishers; doctors who attended to my dear sister as she lay in  that bleak hospital's room on a gurney, in comma desperately  fighting for what most of us take for granted; life.