The Literal Rule

“I want your body sleeping in my bed….”

Those lyrics from one of Wizkid’s hit tracks resounded in my ears as I stared at the lady seated opposite me at this restaurant table. I could not have been blamed for playing the song in my head. It was Good Friday, it was dark, it was cold, I was bored, and I intended to mark the Passion of the Saviour in my own way. In the end, all that would matter was the word “passion”, never mind how it was applied.

Interestingly enough, it was our first official rendezvous. I had found her three weeks earlier on one of the social networking sites, Badoo to be precise. There is this thing about Badoo and linking up people in the same location, and on further scrutiny I discovered that we resided in this same city. Her profile picture had been quite the sight, and when I tried to chat her up, she responded nicely. We began to learn more about each other (at least what we chose to reveal), exchanging photos now and then, and after an exchange of numbers plus a few raunchy chats, we had finally agreed to meet.

It’s said that pictures don’t lie, but whoever said that probably did not have Photoshop, Filters or other enhancements in mind. I was disappointed as I dialled her number and saw her pick her phone at the entrance of the restaurant. Where were those assets that got me drooling whenever I zoomed her profile picture? Where was that defence? The attack? Heck, she looked a shade darker than the photos she usually sent to me. I felt “catfished”, but then a remedy existed. She looked nothing like her pictures, so I would drink until she did. After all, everyone looked beautiful by 2am.

She glanced at the menu and beckoned on the waiter, making her orders at random, without recourse to the bill. The size of my wallet was of no concern to her. I had heard stories of how ladies deliberately set out to embarrass men on dates, and for a moment I felt that was the case here, but I kept my cool. She held nothing back in her quest to bore a hole in my pocket, and I almost wanted to say, “We’re splitting the bill”, but that would have ruined plans for the night, so I kept my lips sealed.

I tried my best to strike up a conversation, but her lack of interest was remarkable. I threw in all kinds of topics, from Fashion to Music to Politics to the few Nollywood movies I could manage watching, but her disinterested eyes and absent-minded nods succeeded in deflating me. I shrugged inwardly. It was not like I arranged this rendezvous for the conversation anyway.

“So, what’s it going to be?”

I looked up. Apparently, she was done with the meal which she would never have bought with her own money, and she wanted to know the next money-sapping adventure. If she could see my mind, the huge frown there would have scared her.

“What would you like, Dearie?” I asked, putting up the fakest smile I could come up with.

“Erm, it’s Friday. Why don’t we hit up the club, you know, turn up?”

I wanted to tell her that it was “club” and not “crub”, but I did not want to put her down on account of her accent, so I just smiled and said, “Club it is then”.

We walked out of the restaurant after I had taken care of the N20,000 bill, and I took her by the hand to the direction of “my” car, a 2009 Model Toyota Camry. My friend Tola was away from the country, and he had handed me the keys.

“Ahn, where is the other one na? The Jeep?”

She was referring to the Honda Pilot which I had sat in, taken a photo and sent to her. I could feel the disappointment in her voice, and I was glad that she felt shortchanged too. I had anticipated the question, and I quickly lied that I had needed to effect some internal repairs. She responded with a resignatory “ok o”, and I could not tell whether or not she bought the lie (not like I cared), but she fixed herself unto the passenger seat of the Camry, and we got going.

My wallet had been rocked a bit, but I was still able to afford entry into a decent club not too far away. We got in, and I ordered a bottle of Magic Moment. The idea was to get intoxicated, burn out the alcohol with some dancing, and get intoxicated some more. I watched her as she drank, studying her level of composure. She was definitely not new to that level of alcohol. The DJ was in good form that night, and when that track from Wizkid came on air, I held her close as we danced and whispered in symmetry with the lyrics, “I want your body sleeping in my bed”, to which she giggled in response.

We left the club at 12:45am. We were by no means sober, but at least we were reasonably aware of our surroundings. We got into the car, and I soon switched on the ignition, but not before trying out the taste of her lips for a few minutes. She responded appropriately, letting my fingers glide along each end of her chest.

“Where are we going?” She asked, as she heard the sound of the car come to life.

“Where do you think? My house of course”, I replied.

“Are there no hotels around?”

“Baby, I don’t want to treat you like a hoe. I won’t just fix you up in some cheap motel, I’m not that kind of guy. I think I like you, and I want to make you feel comfortable. You could spend the entire weekend if you want, I’ve got makeshifts outfits you could change into. Let’s go to mine.”

She was taken in by those lines. My apartment was a forty-minute journey from the club. Her tongue loosened, and she began to regale me with tales of stingy rich men, and how girls easily got pregnant in her neighbourhood. Of course she didn’t disclose the abortions she had carried out, but I could infer from the tone of the conversation that she was no angel.

PHCN proved to be kind to us as we arrived at my place. We kissed again at the door of the apartment as I fumbled with the keys, and as I got in, I put everything in place. We had a bath together, and I turned up the volume of my home theatre. The CD was a mix of various songs which I had burned from a laptop, so there was the switch from blues to rock to metal to Afro-pop.

I pulled out a pair of handcuffs and chained her to the bed. She seemed so excited. We would play out Fifty Shades of Grey, it seemed. BDSM in Nigeria? She would relive the experience for a lifetime. I took out a belt and began to work on her with it, our bodies unclad.

“Punish me, punish me”, she yelled.

“It’s punish, not ‘polish’ “, I said in my mind, but I just smiled and went about the business of the night.

I stopped whipping her after a while. I went to the cupboard at a corner of the bedroom, observing the lust in her eyes. I pulled out a plier and slowly walked up to her. Her facial expression changed.

“What’s the plier for?” She inquired in an apprehensive tone.

She found out soon enough. I didn’t have to respond verbally. I crawled to the fingers of her left hand, fixed one in between the edges of the plier, and despite her struggles, successfully yanked one off. The pain was excruciating, and her screams turned me on. She kicked and kicked, but i balanced my full body mass on her legs, slapping her into submission as i took off a finger from her right hand, my ears digesting the corresponding screams.

“You monster! I hate you!” She cried.

“Not for long, sweetheart. We won’t be long”, I replied.

I was sure that to her, I sounded like the Devil himself, but I could not be bothered. Two fingers gone, a lot more flesh to go. I pummelled her with my fists, and when she was weak enough, I went to the cupboard, brought out a dagger and went to her again. I threw up the dagger, caught it in mid-air, and with the descending velocity, sank it into her left breast.

She screamed again, and this time I got a hard-on. The beautiful thing was that the music from my home theatre drowned her voice, so nobody could guess what was going on. Moreover, I had caused the bulb to be dim, in line with the night’s task. I dragged the dagger sideways, and with it came a huge mound of flesh. I let the blood gush out steadily, scooping a bit of it with my tongue. I then proceeded to where I perceived her heart would be, sending the dagger through. The screams stopped. I had set her free.

I grinned widely as i transferred the two chopped fingers and the breast to my refrigerator. I was almost feeling guilty, but then I was merely teaching her a lesson, one she had not learnt from Facebook and the Cynthia Osokogu experience. Social networks were made up of all kinds of people, some not particularly fitting into the description of normal, and one had to exercise discretion when dealing with strangers. It was pretty unwise for her to have just decided to hop into bed with a man she had only just come in contact with via Badoo, but then, there were many out there just like her.

It was equally sad that she did not take out time to read, or at least be observant. If she was the type that frequently hunted for knowledge, she would have noticed that the pictures on my wall were that of Albert Fish, Charles Manson, Vlad the Impaler and Jack the Ripper, all cold-blooded murderers in their day. She would have also noticed “The Gospel according to Phillip” and Frederick Nietszche’s “Antichrist” on my bedside table. Philip’s gospel included a passage that suggested romantic ties between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, definitely not part of the 66  (or 73) books of the Bible as we knew it. Nietszche was a well-known 19th century German philosopher, who did not exactly subscribe to Christianity. I would ordinarily fit the perfect description of a weirdo, but here she was, in bed with me, not caring to know more about me first.

Yes, her body was on my bed. I had told her that I wanted my body sleeping on my bed, and that was judt what had played out. I would never know Wizkid’s true intent, but I loved to think that whenever the word “body” was used in describing a human, it referred to a corpse. I had merely applied the Literal Rule, which states that words should be given their ordinary and literal meaning.

I slept off soon afterwards, and woke up next to the dead lady by 7am the next day. She looked more attractive in her state of permanent sleep. I kissed her cold lips, and nibbled at her right breast which was still intact. Yes, i was somewhat sexually attracted to corpses, but which human had the right to judge? I walked to her handbag and took out her University I.D card. I saw her full name: NKECHI GOLDEN OCHENDU, student of Anatomy at the Lagos State University. We had just been through a lecture in her line of discipline, only this time she turned out being the cadaver. Then again, she referred to herself as Nikki in our chats. “Oh well, people had a way of Anglicizing their names nowadays”, I said to myself.

I put her body, her shoes, my blood-stained sheets and her handbag into a body bag. I then lifted the body bag out of the house and hurled it into the boot of my car. I loved my neighbourhood; nobody asked too many questions, everyone minded their business. I started the car and drove towards the direction of the Lagos lagoon. I planned to dump the body bag there. It was fitting. She was Igbo afterall.

(P.S: Happy birthday to Oluchi Ofili and Patricia Oma Edet. They are  good friends of mine, and ardent followers of this blog. They love stories, and this one is for them, as they mark their birthday.)