I am a Victim

It rained cats and dogs that fateful morning. I was on my way to the kitchen when I heard strange noises coming from their apartment. They were on each other's neck again, I sighed.

“When will this couple stop bickering?” I mused as I walked up to their door. “I'm going inside.”

The door was slightly open so, I didn't need to knock. I peeped in to satisfy my curiosity but there was nobody in the parlour.

 I guessed they were in the bedroom. That bedroom. I flouted privacy, and pushed the bedroom door open to find Nnenna standing over her husband with a knife in her hand and his blood splattered on their white bedsheet. 

I gasped as she turned around to look at me. Ikenna lay there writhing in pain before he breathed his last. The thunder rumbled in the sky and the clouds darkened.

My screams alerted the people in the compound and they came rushing in. "Ogini? Ogini?" Mama Chinonso, the compound gossip came running in first with a soup ladle in her hand while she used the other to support her wrapper. 

Soon, Nnenna was looking at me, willing me to talk as they cuffed her into the black van. 

I stood there transfixed like a lifeless sculpture unable to tell them of her tales at his hands. Of the time when Ikennna didn't leave her alone until she bled their first baby on the tiled floor.

Her eyes were like hands that stabbed guilt deep in my conscience, but I returned her pleading gaze with a wordless, blank stare.

 She deserved everything she got. What was her life sentence in comparison with the ineffable pain I felt? 

I refused to say anything because Nnenna had just murdered her husband; my lover; the father of my unborn child in cold blood. I didn't care how the story looked. I was the victim.

Bio

Ajala Abolaji is a student of OAU, a writer and a believer amongst many other things. You could reach out to her through her email ajalaabolaji73@gmail.com