NEW STORY; YES! I KILLED HIM (Episode seven)

After we had eaten and rested, watching the epic blockbuster comedy ‘The Mask,’ which starred the hilarious l actor Jim Carrey, boss showed me to my bedroom. I was drained and worried, due to the series of thoughts that kept erupting in my mind. “If the phone the police had found was actually mine, then the depth of shit I have gotten myself into, is deeper than I initially feared. The new information my boss had relayed to me, is causing some serious strains within me. The chaos is eating me up. What about my all my chats, whatsapp, facebook messenger and the other likes? What would they think if they saw the contents? Gooosshh! I’m finished. I really should be dead right now,” I thought as I slipped my tired body into the family-sized bed. The beds softness was much more comforting than my own thoughts, and how I so wished the feelings it gave my body can be extended to my heart right about this moment. I’m sure it would grant my troubled heart some peace.

Though I was very tired, sleep seemed very far from my eyes. I managed to get up, reach the switch, turned out the lights and slipped back lousily into my bed. “I should have come with my laptop. Music would have been the best therapy for me tonight,” I thought. I had barely closed my eyes trying to find sleep wherever it had hidden itself, when the lights came back on. It was my boss.

“Kay, are you alright?” he asked, already in his boxers and a plain white t-shirt. “Yes, I am,” I replied. “Sean,” he stressed. “Call me Sean,” he stressed again as he walked towards my bed. Even in ordinary boxers, he still looked exquisitely cute. And his bulge? It was even bigger than I has thought. I wondered how, what he harbored underneath those boxers would looked like for a moment, and then shook it off my head immediately, as he came and sat down on the bed. “You looked very worried Kay. Is there anything particularly bothering you? If there is, we can talk about it. See me as your friend now, and forget the bossing for now at least. When we get back to workplace on Monday we continue, he said, his voice deep and rich with concern and care. I sat up, looked at him for a while and then looked away gently. “Why are you being extra nice to me, boss? I know naturally you are nice to a fault, but this, the whole thing makes me slightly uneasy. I mean no harm by asking, but I really would love to know, because I feel I’ve been here before. It feels like a ‘dejavu’ and I would never allow the last experience I had to repeat itself. I swear on my life,” I said, softly. Then tuning to him, I continued. “What exactly boss? I am not the only worker in your company, neither am I the best or most intelligent. But it seems you have taken a special interest in me and won’t stop at anything to show it. So tell me exactly Boss, what is it about me that warrants these extra interests? I need to know.” “My name, Kay, is Sean,” he reinstated, after listening to me patiently. “I want…,” his phone vibrated distracting and cutting him short from finishing his sentence. He looked at it, touched a button and seemed to have read something from it. Then he shook his head, passed the phone over to me and said, “Read.” I took the phone from him and glanced through the message that appeared before me:

“May God punish you and reserve the deepest and hottest part of hell for you. You this demon. You thought you could ruin my life. God will judge you. You hear! God will judge you!”

i was more awake now after reading the text message, stunned by the weight of what I had read , or should I say that what actually stunned me, was to whom it was addressed – my boss. He’s just too perfect and too nice for someone to have sent that. Yeah, I know everyone has their little demons, but it seemed to me my boss had been able to trade his demons fortunately, wherever, for his charms and charisma. “Who sent that,” I asked disgustedly. “My wife. Sorry, my ex-wife I meant to say,” he said, retaining a faint smile on his lips. “Ex-Wife?” I exclaimed. “Yes,” he nodded, “Ex-wife,” he said as he collected the phone from me, tapped on few buttons and gave them back to me. It was a picture of a beautiful woman, whom I already guessed must be his ex-wife. “Who,” I asked. “My wife, sorry again. I meant my ex-wife. I shave to get used quickly to adding the ex,” he said and chuckled. “Well, this may sound fun and funny to you, but I can’t tell you how really awkward I feel right now about it. Last year, I remember you called her on her birthday, with your phone on its external speaker, as all the staff sung her a birthday song. You said she was in Italy then,” I said. “Yes, you have a very sound memory. She’s still there in Italy. Though we are officially divorced, she keeps sending these messages, thinking she can provoke me with them. She thinks I wanted to ruin her life. She thinks all sorts of things about me now. The message you read, is nothing compare to some others she had sent. She thinks all sorts of ill-mannered things about me, and when she can’t contain the thoughts, she shares them with me via text messages,” he said as he heaved a sigh.

“Things like what? What happened? Why did she leave? Was it you who filed for a divorce, or she did?” I pressed with more questions. “No! I would never do such a thing, but I still believe it was for the best of our interests that we did. I am glad we both came to that point where we had to set ourselves from the bondage we greedily self-inflicted on ourselves,” he said. “I don’t understand Sean, errmm, I mean Boss. Please explain,” I finished stuttering, having realized that I had eventually fallen into the trap of calling my boss by his name. He laughed, patted the back of my hand and said, “You sleep now Kay. We have lots of time to talk tomorrow.” “I don’t feel sleepy. We van talk now,” I said. “Goodnight Kay. We’ll talk morrow, okay?” he said as he stood to leave. I held his hand and said, “Stay Sean. I want to hear your story. Tell it to me like it is. I won’t interrupt you; I won’t judge you. I just want to listen to you pour out your heart. Remember, a problem shared is half solved.” He sat back down on the bed, looking like a lost child, longing for its mother. I could sense the weight of his pain from his silence. His eyes blinked restlessly and after a while he was gazing blankly at the pillow on my bed. “Sean, I called out his name again, quietly. “I want you to tell me your story. I’m all ears,” I said.

“Now listen,” he started. “For years, I have learned to fight myself in order to be someone else. I have battled ceaselessly this thing they called a demon, which surfaced each day to eat every atom of peace within me without a second thought. I have sojourned, seeking for the slightest remedy to calm my tormented soul,” he said. I laid back down, so I can get a proper view of his face as he spoke. “This demon, what is it like when it overwhelms you? How do you know it has surfaced? What does it make you in particular?” I asked him gently. “You sure don’t want to know Kay. You sure don’t. My growing up as a teenager was absolute war for me. There were no kinds of places I wasn’t taken for prayers, my parents being the staunch religious type, to make sure this demon was suppressed,” he said, as he bowed his head like a dying last soldier, surrounded by a thousand foes. Tears flowed down his cheek, seeding a mild chill through me at the sight of him crying. I watched him without the slightest idea of what to do. I quietly reached folded my hands and observed him quietly.

Then he continued, “Kay, my wife left me because of you.” Suddenly it seemed like I had been stuck by lightening. I was speechless, dumbfounded. I could only gaze at him in shock as his statement kept echoing in my head. “What the hell did he even mean by that,” I thought.

“My wife left me when she found out, one year after our marriage. Then wrote me few weeks after our divorce, that she had aborted our three weeks old baby, soon afterwards she had found out. She was going to tell me about our baby on the same day she caught me red handed,” he said, and then sighed heavily. “That fateful day she was scheduled to travel. All preparations had been duly processed. I dropped her off at the airport and kissed her goodbye. Then drove back to the office. That same day in the evening, I organized a little get together for my staff and few friends. It was on a Friday. I was so lost in the party mood, a bit tipsy as well, I never had the slightest idea my phone had been ringing. After my friends and staff had gone, I asked one of my staff to wait around…” “To wait around and help you clean up the messed up room, with the promise that you’d drop him off when he was done,” I said, cutting him short and finishing the statement aptly for him. I remembered that night like yesterday. That was my first encounter with my boss. He kept staring at me while I cleaned up the whole messy room diligently.He was very high on alcohol that night. To drunk for whatever happened afterwards to be true.

“My wife left me because of you, Kay. She saw us that night. She had come back home very late in the night, angry. She had called uncountable times because her flight had been cancelled and she was stranded. But I was so drunk and high that night I didn’t even know where I dropped my phone. And yeeesss! Talking about phones, that reminds me,” he detoured I his story, “There’s a phone I saw in my bag and I’m not sure who owns it. Let me get it. Maybe you might be able to identify which of the staff it belongs to. A minute please,” he said as he left the bedroom.

He returned few minutes later only to be holding in his hand that looked like mine. “Do you have an idea whom the owner is? I think someone must have left it on their desk and my driver must have mistakenly packed it alongside your laptop and wallet when I asked him to put your things inside my bag yesterday,” he said, tossing the phone towards me. “I think you should sleep Kay. We’ll continue our talk in the morning. Goodnight,” he said as he turned out the lights and closed the door behind him.

The phone was mine.

Chukwudi Udoye Eternal
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