AFTER SUN, COMES RAIN.
1021 Words
Reuben’s room was too quiet.
The fan was spinning. The bulb was flickering.
Legs shaking and heart still panting. This sweat seems to enjoy making its way down his forehead to his chin. He was tired of wiping his face. Oh! let this be a form of hide and seek thing or a prank. Julie cannot plan with Uncle Ben to prank him, they barely know eachother.
He hadn’t gone back to Uncle Ben.
He ran from the compound, ran to 3 bus stops, asked conductors, called Julie until his credit finished.
Then he stopped.
Because there was nowhere else to run to.
Now it was 7:30pm.
His room smelled like sweat and fear.
Reuben sat on the edge of his bed. His phone was on the table. 0% battery. Dead.
He didn’t charge it.
What was the point? Julie wasn’t picking. Uncle Ben said "come tomorrow."
Come tomorrow for what? For school fees? While Julie was missing?
Reuben put his head in his hands.
He kept seeing it.
The way Uncle Ben looked at Julie in the sitting room.
Not like an uncle.
Like a man seeing a fine girl for the first time.
Reuben had brushed it off then.
`He’s old. He’s married. Aunty Joy is the winner of a beauty pageant. She is beauty personify. He can’t...`
But now?
He remembered something else.
Last year December. At a Family meeting of one of his friends. One of the big men said. "there is no rich man in this country that doesn't like or have a younger girl to keep body and body together. Except that man is a genuine pastor called by God."
Reuben laughed it off.
Uncle Ben is a rich man and to the best of my knowledge he is not a pastor nor even a church goer. That means he will also love having younger girls too. But Julie is not that type of a girl. She is well cultured and brought up. she loves him. So he thought.
Reuben stood up and started pacing.
His room was 1 room self contain. No AC. No fridge.
Julie’s house had generator, AC, everything.
Julie was not suffering.
She was a General’s daughter. She didn’t need Uncle Ben’s money.
So why did she follow him?
The question made Reuben’s chest tight.
Maybe she was scared.
Maybe Ben threatened her.
Maybe... maybe she liked the attention.
The thought made Reuben want to punch the wall.
Julie had never had softness.
Her father: Stand up straight. Don’t talk back. 9pm curfew.
Her mother died when she was 16. Since then, it was just orders.
But Uncle Ben?
Uncle Ben mus have asked her " have you eaten today"?
Or maybe Uncle Ben offered her water.
Or did Uncle Ben call her "my dear?"
Reuben remembered how Julie’s face softened the first time he called her my dear.
My dear.
Reuben kicked his bucket. It fell with a loud bang.
No.
Julie wouldn’t fall for it.
She loved him. four years is no four days.
But four years of what?
Handwritten notes.
Sharing gala on the road.
Promises of "after law school."
Reuben sat down again.
He thought of Uncle Ben’s house. Big. Empty.
Aunty Joy had been in the United Kingdom since two years doing her Masters.
No children.
Just Ben, Musa, Akpan, and silence.
And now Julie.
Reuben’s mind started running wild.
What if Uncle Ben had taken her to the hotel?
What if Ben was touching her right now?
What if Julie, for one second, liked it because no one had ever been gentle with her?
Reuben groaned and dropped to his knees.
She is a good girl. She said we cannot do that until marriage.
whatever is happening between them maybe father and daughter type of discussion.
Reuben hadn't’t prayed in months.
But now he was ready to pray.
The door to his compound creaked.
Footsteps.
Reuben jumped up.
For one stupid second he thought it was Julie.
It was his neighbor, Mama Titi.
MAMA TITI
Reuben, you dey? Light don go for 3 hours.
REUBEN
Yes ma.
MAMA TITI
You look like person wey see ghost. Wetin happen?
REUBEN
Nothing ma. I’m fine.
She looked at him, then left.
Reuben locked the door.
He went to his small table and opened his notebook. Law notes.
He couldn’t read.
The words were swimming.
He remembered Julie saying: My father is strict but he means well. Since mama died, he’s just scared I might want to go wayward like most kids without mom do.
Scared.
Was that why Julie followed Uncle Ben? Because she was tired of being scared?
Reuben picked up his dead phone and pressed the power button anyway.
Nothing.
He threw it on the bed.
He needed to do something.
But what?
Go to the police? And say what? "My uncle took my girlfriend and I have no proof."
Go to Julie’s father? A retired General? And say "Sir, your daughter entered my uncle’s car."
Reuben would be the first suspect.
The realization hit him like cold water.
If Julie didn’t come home tonight, her father would come looking.
And the last person seen with Julie was Reuben.
At Uncle Ben’s house.
Reuben was being set up.
He didn’t know how.
He didn’t know why.
But he felt it in his bones.
Someone wanted him to be the one blamed for Julie’s disappearance. But what do they want to achieve? Reuben is not a political person.
And the only person who benefited if Reuben went to jail was...
Reuben couldn’t finish the thought.
He lay on the floor. Staring at the ceiling.
Outside, it started raining.
Small drops at first. Then heavy.
Reuben didn’t move.
He just whispered into the dark.
His clothes are drenched outside but it's not important at this moment. He just wished Julie could fall out from somewhere and he's not even going to be scared if she appears with magical powers.
REUBEN
Julie, where are you?
No answers.
of course there answers but it came from the rain drops. Reuben cannot hear the language of the rain.
Only rain.
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