The Furor (part 1) by Isidinma Nnamdi

T

Tick Tock

Tick Tock

It’s 6:30am in the morning, but you are wide awake. You should be fast asleep like every other sleep-deprived worker would proudly be on such a rainy Friday morning. But the adrenaline flowing through your veins has wiped away sleep’s last vestiges from your eyes. Besides, if the sizable groans and moans in the other room were any indication, Gabriel and Masiri were at it again. But that knowledge no longer clouds your eyes with residues of an old pain. It no longer fills your mouth with the bitter taste of betrayal. Today was finally here. The day of reckoning had finally arrived. You close your eyes and force yourself to tune out their voices, and instead, open your mind up to the imminent journey of the next 12 hours….

…….

At exactly 7am, you will get up and prepare for work. You’ll be in the kitchen preparing breakfast when Gabriel will waltz in like he always does every morning and give that stupid smile filled with pathetic remorse that you’ve hated for what seems like forever now. He will hide his face and ask if you had a nice night and if you needed anything… like as though you both hadn’t spent the last 4 years of your marriage waking up to loud laughs, teasing and kisses that always lit up your day. Like as though he hadn’t thrown all that away for mad, emotionless sex every night with the village trollop that Maami had brought into your own home. You will simply return that fake smile, say you are fine, and ask if he needed you to make another plate for him. And Gabriel, being the astute fool you’d loved more than anything, will sigh in relief and say yes. And after that, you will go to the workplace you share with your husband and live through the horror that is office gossip. They will not speak to you outright because you are the CEO. But behind your back, they will whisper in corners and crossroads. They will wonder why the owner of a Production company cannot just sack her buffoon of a husband and divorce him. Behind their closed lips, they will call you weak because you let your Mother-In-Law wander into your home and dump a village wife on your husband because you have not yet been delivered of any child after 5 years of marriage. They will not understand that you cannot leave because, in the first year of your marriage, you’d foolishly signed away half your rights of ownership of the Company to Gabriel and now you must fight to get it back. They will never understand, and so you will simply smile that wide, faint smile again….

The rest of this story will be posted next week Friday, subscribe to our mail to be updated.

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Pencilmarks and Scribbles Magazine was founded in 2017 by Clara Jack to be a home for African writers, asking them to come as they are and giving them room for growth. The publication aims to give back to the Nigerian Literary scene for the things it has given us.