Thinking Brighter Though

Thoughts.

Don't rush it. It will reach everybody. I would've loved to talk about my girlfriend but she is still sleeping and I have yet to get her approval. And I'm also having a second thought about it. Even my friend has offered to pay me so that I will post about him today, but I said no! Let's talk about righteousness. Let's talk about life. Every day isn't about catching a cruise. Let's face reality.

Don't agree with me, but you can meet a lion in the forest and go home alive. Snakes are venomous, but you can get bitten by a snake and live without any treatment. I'm only trying to say that some are just answering snakes without any venom. Man is evil. Guy, I'm not evil if you're, but some are evil and so we've to answer it unquestionably.

Chinedu was the person who was used as a good example to us during primary school. He would be called to stand in front of the whole class while the teacher showed us how he dressed. How he cut his hair. How he tucked in his shirt. How he walked. It even went to the point that teachers told us to visit him at his house after school with the intention of him teaching us how to read and write.

When we were in secondary school __ that was after I changed school about three or four times __ Chinedu was our SP. He did well. I admired him because he did what he taught. After secondary school, we went our separate ways. When we met again, we were both already planning to enter university. Chinedu said that he wanted to study linguistics. I said to him __ because I have known him since that time __ Nedu, what are you doing with linguistics? Come, let us study plant science. But he was determined; he had plans.

He married after school, but he doesn't behave like he was married. He couldn't prètend again. This is a time for nature. He started having sèx with different girls every day.

This happened in the late nineties, during the ruling era of my dear hero, when a young girl was sitting on a bed inside Nekt hotel, with her head downcast and her eyes clouded with tears. She wasn't crying. She'd cried enough. She was tired of crying. She'd cried and comforted herself, cried again and comforted herself. She continued to repeat it until she decided to stop because her mother had only her. She was her mother's son, and her mother's daughter. This was what made her stop crying, but the pain was still there, sinking inside her.

"You have to abort the baby." She looked up and looked at the man who once said that he loved her. She had never seen this side of him since they started dating.

"Chioma." She looked up. "You have to abort the baby."

Chioma was pressed. "I thought you were joking when you said this over the phone. So do you mean it? I thought you said that you would marry me?"

"I can't mårry you."

Chioma looked at Nedu as a tèar dropped down from her right eye. She could still remember the day she met him. She was coming back from fellowship when he approached her and she accepted him because she knew who he was. That was the kind of man his parents wanted. It was just after a week when he told her that he would marry her and he took her vîrginity that same day. From that day onward, everything went rampant but lovely and gentle until it got to this age.

"Why?" Chioma asked. "Why can't you marry me?"

Nedu looked at her for a fleeting moment and then looked away. This wasn't the first time that he had done this. This wasn't the second or the third. He's been doing it all along. He doesn't feel any rèmorse or åfraid because Chioma has nobody. She was poòr.

"I'm married," he said at last.

Chioma opened her mouth to speak, but the only thing that came out was air. Her eyelids started to close by themselves. She felt like dyîng. She was weåk. She lay on the bed, sobbing silently.

Nedu took out a drúg from his trouser pocket and forced it into her mouth. He was very kind because he later gave her a glass of water to digest it.

"Maka ulcer. Because of an ulcer," he said and laughed. He found it humourous.

That same night, as Chioma was dying because of the abortion pill she took, Nedu was standing over more than one thousand people, literate and illiterate, preaching to them about rightness, faithfulness to one's partner, obedience and the need to help the pòor.

Ooh, I forgot. Nedu is a pastor.

Ken Walker