(By Oluwatoyin Ikuomola)
Continued from part one, part two, part three, part four, part five
My cousin lost an eye that day to help get me out.
I lost an entire layer of skin.
Emeka told everyone I had lured him into the room, and when he had refused to go to bed with me, I hit his head with the lantern and then set fire to the room because, according to him, I said “I couldn’t live with the rejection.”
By the time he rushed out to wash away the blood which had filled his eyes already, my room was already up in flames.
He said he had tried to free me, but he couldn’t and so he went to look for a machete or saw to cut through the ceiling.
He begged my family not to be overly angry, but to be lenient and patient with me.
They believed him.
I didn’t sit for my school cert that year or any other year in fact.
I wasn’t allowed to speak. I had brought shame upon my family. I was forced to recuperate in that same room where I had been raped and nearly killed.
That was my punishment.
The nights were terrifying. The most terrifying was when the tiny rats that played in the roof jumped onto my bed due to the absence of the ceiling there.
They fell right onto my burn wounds. I screamed in pain and complete horror.
Ngozi ran in and simply stood and stared at me.
I called out to her.
“Ngozi I’m scared.”
She walked up to me.
“You’re scared?” she asked.
“Yes”.
She slapped me hard. The pain was excruciating. It tore through every muscle, every nerve and every cell in my body as I screamed awake to realised I had only been dreaming.
I looked at my scarred body; it all happened, just not on this night.
This night, I had only been dreaming about the events that marked the beginning of the end of my life.
Unlike the last time when she had eventually left me to go away with her husband, Ngozi was here with me tonight. She was here in my room, watching me in the darkness…
Chapter seven comes up tomorrow
