STORY: A DIARY OF TWO STRANGERS CHAPTER 2

...I turned my back on her exiting the scene, she had first grabbed at her chest, seeming to rip out her heart but grabbed her stomach rather, as if to bring a child out of it, like an evidence to refute my last words. She went down on the floor with a howling cry. I could care less if she wept...

I banged the door so loud, the neighbours should have jumped out of bed… but they didn’t...

Thinking about it in this lonely park, I resented this night, “why did I have to come home tonight?” I said out loud.
I kicked at the dry leaves around. I tried to get violent with them. How could they sit idly watching me burn. I screamed at the dark sky for turning dark, else I would be at work. Work! The only place happiness exists in my world. Am so beat out, I need someone to remind me am still human. I need to be loved again, I feel dry; I deserve to be a happy man.

No! Not tonight! I am not going to do any explaining, I am not going to try and fix things, no, not this night. If being home with Melenie is hell, there have to be a heaven - somewhere… There have to be! I am not going to hell tonight, am going to find that heaven and have a time of bliss with someone better than Melenie. I turned and took the first footstep in pursuit of happiness.

“No! You are neither going to find it nor the heaven you described.”

Startled, I turned around, who’s… Who’s there?

I looked around nervously, placing my left hand as a shade over my brows. I peered into the dark corners, wishing the trees could step back so its shades would succumb in the moon’s shine. Who’s there? Speak up! Then I heard the ceramic park bench giggle twice and more, I swear it did. I had to take few steps backwards to know it’s no dream, that I am not hypnotized or even haunted by Melenie,  but also to call my hormones to go defensive in case of perceived danger. Although, the suitable defensive measure that readily comes to mind is taking to my heels. Soon I saw the charred figure of a man who lied down. He was flat as the park bench where he laid.

He stared at the moon as though unaware of me or how his giggles startled me. I thought about him for a moment, my mind raced across discussions I heard through the week which I never cared about; like the safety of the parks, having certain emergency numbers stored on your mobile, stalkers, homeless folks, unsolved murder cases etc. I had to twitch my hands so my mind could get back to where I stood.

I gazed at the ragged figure, “I heard psychos lurk around parks at night. He has to be one of them” I thought, starring towards his direction. I felt uneasy, almost awkward. I thought to go, to allow his words fade as a howling wind does. I chewed on my lower lip with a bit of anger. All the while, I didn't know I was thinking out loud. But so I thought I was all alone, in a world of my own in this park. Oh man! This man looks creepy.

As I placed one foot on the dry grass to exit, it seem to prompt his lips to part with words again, “You are not going to find what you seek”.

I cast my eyes over my shoulders without turning around.

“Old man you said…?”

“You won’t find it!” He spoke almost immediately I completed my sentence. I turned back towards where he laid. Like a ghoul he lifted his upper body from where he had cast it, he was grey in the cover of the moonlight, like an awakened zombie from its tomb; he casts his gaze directly at me...

“I know of a man, a good man, maybe your age,” he had interrupted the silence. Now he paused to probably seek my consent to continue. I looked at him but didn’t utter a word. I wasn’t going to be persuaded by folklore from a beggarly dwarf. “Yes, your age, now that I think about it,” he continued. “He was the best friend I had next to my thoughts. He was a successful man, hmm... They are always successful, thinking about it now...”

“Anyways that is not the point,” he interjected himself.

“He was faithful to his wife, hardworking, he loved his children. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him, the best decision, in my opinion, that he ever made. He was always away; he professed love to his wife distance and miles away. When he got home, he comes with presents and treats for his wife. But his wife had to share him with his business, that is where the grey lines began to spread. Soon she began to nag, the man felt she was irrational, he once told me, ‘She acts childish! Always seeking attention.' most times this didn’t go down well with him.”

“The woman decided to be quiet when the arguments never solved a thing. She was always alone in the luxurious comfort of the home. She ought to delight knowing that he was working round the clock but the void of being alone deprives her of rendering him any compliment. She prayed sometimes that her husband’s business chain would collapse, if it means he gets to stick around, to cuddle her and notice what she wore or at least remember the kids birthday. She responded to her loneliness by living in her past, she would laugh out sometimes when she reflects on their great yesterday, those were times this man thought his wife had gone senile. She would relish on the days they were both young in love; cuddling her was his hubby, teasing her of her dark bushy brows was how he told her how much he missed her. She visits the past so much she lost the strength to continue in the present and hope for the future. Gradually, depression became her natural hobby, she delved into it often, till it became her obsession.

The man realized the wife had gone silent, he thanked God the nagging and complaints stopped. Although, loneliness now clawed his own soul, but his consolation was the silence he mistook for peace.

Now he could get on his laptop in silence and work throughout the night. He was going to secure the future for his children and wife at all cost. As an insurance manager he had seen poverty make a monster out of families. The demise of the breadwinner breeds evil things. His wife and kids deserves to be happy, someday, ‘My wife is going to understand why I have to be away,’ so he thought.” The old man paused again, watching an owl pay attention to him from a leafless tree branch.

He tried to get a response from the surrounding trees; he did, as the wind blew past, they cheered him on and so did the crickets. He grinned and spoke, "You know life comes with a twist". Then continued, “The man began to feel empty and void, feelings his wife was acquainted with. The man was once a good man, that deserved to be happy, but his wife had gone cold on him… at least that was his thought.”

That line of words made me think about my thoughts recently, I cursed under my breathe wondering where this man took the line from. I must have spoken my thoughts out loud. But I don’t have to listen to him anymore, do I? But I didn’t move an inch nonetheless…

“He met couple of girls on his travels and they fill the void, but they also created depths of emptiness in him because kept coming back and adding to them (girls) up till he lost count of his extra marital escapades. It took a while for him to know they never filled the void. So temporal is pleasure without a home, a wife to sustain to nurture its fragrance."

"At first, he had sex outside his home because he was a victim of a grumpy wife but soon he couldn’t justify his actions anymore, he couldn’t claim he was a victim. Guilt made him stop taking his wife out and she never showed any signs that she bothered either. The more he stared at her, the more she aged, the more he visits home the more he felt strange living with a stranger."

"One day, heading home from one of his business trips, he thought about it, when had he felt like a married man? He rubbed briskly on his wedding ring, he remembered it meant something once before it became a ring. Things had gone so bad with him that he didn't even bother taking his ring off when he was around the girls. It flashed through his mind like a snapshot, that the old woman rotting away at home was once beautiful, she was his bride, there once exist a glow on her now gloomy face. He had promised they would age together..."

Click here to read chapter 3

Paul Aremooluwa

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       2016