The Taste of Old Wine

A

FTER INI RECEIVED the phone call, she gussied up and hurried down through the stairs of her hostel on Iwu university campus. She was scandalously dressed in a red evening gown which revealed more than just cleavage of her breasts. Her long legs stretched out sensually from under the short gown so that any sane man could lose his mind and drool.

She was a six-footer, yet she wore high heels. Sensuously slim, beautiful, and endowed with bulges in the right places. And for that, she always thanked her creator. She walked into the night fraught with cold air in a sinful gait as eyes scooted after her.

She continued walking and soon came out of the campus ground. She crossed to the other side of the road where a black Range Rover waited for her.

She walked over and opened the door to the passenger’s seat, hopped in beside the driver believed to be Victor or so he said his name was. They hadn’t met before. They had been talking on the phone for a couple of days now. A mutual friend, someone she had taken care must have played the pimp. She didn’t care how he’d gotten her phone number anyway. She was a call girl. And in her line of business it came with the territory.

Although, it gave her a few lines on the face the man wasn’t anywhere near youth. He should be in his early or mid-sixties, older than her own father. Not that she cared that much anyways. As they say, the older the old wine, the sweeter the taste.  

Victor was good looking, cleanly shaven on the night, and smelt of expensive perfume. He was massive in size and had a pot belly that floated like a big ball a small pool. Like they also say, the bigger the belly, the more the money he’s got. Ini considered only the positives.

“Hello baby girl”, he teased.

“Good evening”, she retorted.

They exchanged pleasantries, and then the jeep rolled off. Fifteen minutes later, they were pulling over at Quincy hotels. Victor got out and headed to the reception to book for a room. Few minutes later they were led by a lady to their room.

He ordered for some kebab, bottles of red wine and some water which were later served them. Ini usually didn’t drink alcohol on a night-out like this. She believed it‘d tamper with the mind and she would lose her good sense of judgment.  One of the rules of the game was, never trust the client.

Suddenly, she began to feel a strange vibe. It had never happened to her before. Ever. For a moment, she thought about her messy life. How it had come to this, selling her body for money.

Suddenly now, she was not proud of what she did for money. While she pondered about it, another wave of thought came through, convincing her that there was no other way for her. Her parents lived from hand to mouth and she had to put her self through school. She was now in her final year studying Pharmacy. Thanks to her friends who introduced her into the business. In just few months’ time she would be a university graduate.

She sighed, her mind swinging back to how the cookie would crumble on the night. Victor was paying her sixty thousand naira for three hours tonight. That was good business.

Victor emptied two bottles of the red wine and then began to pull off his clothes.

She prayed silently for pleasure and not pain when he climb on her, realizing what alcohol do to a man’s sexual strength. It was going to be a long night’s drive. He would ride her bonkers out of her brains. Her sexual heat began to gather momentum at the thought though.

She began to undress. When she was done after him, she went to lie on the bed, expecting the old man to wear a condom. But the man didn’t. He was about to perch on her like vulture on a cadaver when she swept herself off the bed. She now stood on the other side of the bed, her breasts joggling all over the place.

“Condom, please”, she asked.

“Condom?”, he retorted and then continued “ I don’t use condoms. I do skin to skin. Why do you think I’m paying you twenty grand for an hour, and sixty for three hours?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have unprotected sex. I don’t really know you”

“Says the call-girl?”, he snapped.“Well, you can be rest assured I’m safe…” he continued.

“Please no words. Condom”

Now Victor was furious. “What are you, are you not a prostitute? I am the one paying here. So I make the rules” he said, raising his voice.

“I’m sorry, but I have my rules and this is one. No condom, no sex”. She folded her arms to cover and hold her jumpy breasts down which were full to the tips.

Victor realized she was going to stand her ground all night. She would rather walk out on him than pander to him.  He decided to try a softer approach.

“Okay, I apologized for snapping at you…” he began “I don’t have any disease. I will pay you extra twenty if we just get this over with” he said in a pleading way.

Now, the strange vibe was coming again. There was more to him that met the eyes. She had heard a lot of stories about occultist having sex with young girls for diabolic reasons. She might be meeting one right now and the harbingers are loud and clear. First, he was an old man. Second, he was desperate to have an unprotected sex. And third, he’d mysteriously called her and refused to tell her how he had gotten her cell phone number.

 “I should go”, she bolted for her dress, panic washing her whole body like water.

Unfortunately, it was already too late. Victor charged and bolted after. He grabbed her and wrestled her to the bed. She struggled and tried to scream then, but as in nightmare, the sound died in her throat. He had grasped it, suffocating her. And he weighed her body down with his, clipped her two hands with his other hand above her head.  

Then he slipped his penis into her vagina and began to thrust back and forth. Ini’s eyes bulged in pain, and in fear of dying this way. She couldn’t struggle at the very least. His strength was overwhelming.

She couldn’t even reach a gasp. She prayed it ended soon and still be alive. But it was not going to end soon going by the load of alcohol in him. He jerked on, hard and rough. Gradually, she lost her consciousness.

Twenty three minutes later, he moaned with pleasure as he ejaculated convulsively inside her. He let go. He walked to his bag and brought out a small nylon. And then a goat’s horn wrapped with a red cloth.

He unfurled the nylon and a black powder came to sight. He took a pinch of it and put it on his tongue. Then he began to recite something in a strange language only he understood.

Ra ku tu la wi le rut a la.

 He moved the horn over her body three times in a circular motion and then touched her forehead with it.

When he was done with the ritual, he cut off some of her pubic hair with a scissors, put it with the black powder in the nylon and tied it up.

He stowed the horn and the nylon away in his bag. He hurriedly dressed up, counted eighty thousand naira and tossed it beside her on the bed. He handed his bag and then left the room.

Few minutes later, Ini moved a hand, a leg, and then her body. She slowly woke up from a state which seemed to be trance and sat up to realize what had just happened to her. Huddling up on the bed, she burst out crying. Grave fear immersed her.

Something very evil would befall her in the later days. She was so sure of it. 

All along, Victor had had the plan to rape her at some point on the night. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to conduct the ritual.

 While she was unconscious, she’d had a dream of being rape by a creature in both human and beast likeness with a horn on the fore head. And when the ejaculation was felt inside her, she’d felt something slither in her womb.

She cried for nearly twenty minutes. Then, she began to pull her left-over up. She dressed up. She picked the money on the bed regretfully and stowed it in her purse.  She wouldn’t want to lose at both ends.

She left the room.

The Pandora's Box

S

TARK NAKED, MY BLEARY eyes riveted on the naked corpse beside me on the bed. Her eyes were wide open towards the ceiling, and drool was all around her mouth. Panic gripped me and my heart thudded in my chest like artillery.

It was 10:47pm now in the ambience of the red lighted room of Quincy hotel, where I was stuck with another man’s wife who happened to be dead.

My head was imploding, scores of thoughts rioted inwardly. The loudest of it indulged me to run off. Another little one warned me that if I did, I would eventually be caught.

 I frequented the hotel and was known by most of the hotel boys. Once my description got to the police, and then my car, her family would only think of only me and pointed finger. I mean, I drove a red Audi car with LFC’s sticker on the wheel screen.

I had the complexion of Ramsey Nouah and the height of Desmond Elliot. I had bulging eyes of Segun Arinze. Believe me; this description would reel me out. The hotel would then confirm me as her secret lover and killer.

I didn’t kill her though. I mean, not voluntarily. We had sex, great one at that. But yes, we had it rough, the way she’d always liked it. Then in the middle of it, she began to convulse, having seizure. Suddenly she died. My gut told me she had had a bad heart and it failed. The scene kept replaying in my mind. It was so vivid.

I tried to save her. Heavens know I did. I even put my blackberry between her gritted teeth. I knew what I was buying all along, now I only had my self to blame. 

A sudden rap on the door jolted me back from my delirious thoughts, a knock I’d expected. I‘d booked a two-hour short time and it was out. I prayed silently it was Peter, the room service boy I was friendly with the most.  

I couldn’t contain my nerves. They jumped and sent my whole body into a shudder as mad rush of blood moved through the vessels under my skin.

I miraculously moved my laden legs to the door though. Still naked, I opened the door slightly. There, Paul was standing.

“Your time is up, sir”, he said politely, “I’m sorry to…”

“Paul”, I said, “There –is- a –pr-ob-lem”, I said incoherently.

“Problem?” he retorted in bewilderment.

I let him into the room. He saw the diminutive naked figure on the bed, and didn’t flinch.

“She’s dead”, I said.

“Seizure?” he asked and then sauntered closer to feel her cold body.

“Yes” I retorted, “How did you kn…?”

“The drool” he said pointing finger at her mouth.

He told me he had to go and get the manager. Each breath I took hung halfway as I waited for the manager.  Less than five minutes later, Paul reappeared with the bald headed man.

“Who is she, and what happened?” the manager asked, trying hard to comport himself.

He knew me as a good customer. Sometimes he hung in the bar with customers when EPL football games were showing on the cable TV. We supported the same team, the Reds. I explained how she’d died and all. He understood I couldn’t have killed her because over the years I had brought scores of women including this dead one to the hotel and none had ever died on me.

“Her name was Lillian. She was my neighbor’s wife and a mother of three” I’d explained, “I’m dead. How do I explain this to her family, or mine? That I poked and prodded her to death?  I’m so dead” I huffed.

“Oh, The police…?!” I nodded in regret.

“Police?” the manager retorted derisively, fidgeting around the place and nodding his head simultaneously. I was bewildered.

“This is a repeated occurrence here, the third as a matter of fact.  You are not the first”, he started. I was all ears, every hair on my body bristling. “I’m going to tell you what most hotels do” he paused and then perched on the edge of the bed, with his bald head he looked like a vulture, looking at me sternly for body language, he continued.

 “They let the customer get the dead body out of the hotel quietly and ditch”, he continued.

My jaws were suddenly on the floor instantly. He spoke on, however.

“The police don’t care if you killed her or not. They will only come here acting CSI Miami, with the media  taking no prisoner, shooting the bad movie titled A Man Sexually Kills Neighbour’s Wife in a Hotel”, he hesitated, then continued. “This is bad publicity for all of us, lives will be affected. And it is very bad for business. Our customers will feel exposed and start going to other places, worse still think that this place is cursed or something”

“Is that what I’m supposed to do now, get her body out of here and thrash?” I asked with a hangdog’s look I guess.

He said nothing and just looked away like it was my choice to make. I buried my face in my palms and pondered for a moment.

Time was volatile. I had to make up my mind fast. So I thought deeply. I’d been given an easy way out and the odds were good.

I heaved a long sigh and my mind was now made up.  I was nailing this Pandora’s Box for good. I agreed to the plan. Get the dead body out. Ditch. Move on.

The manager told me to go and wait in my car and leave my trunk unlocked. In my car, I waited for about ten minutes, praying this plan didn’t go south once I was out there on my own with the corpse.

I would no longer have the benefit of claiming I’d killed her sexually in the hotel. I’d given up my lodging receipt. So the hotel had deniability I was ever there on the night. My crime would change complexion.

However, I was taking my chances. I was getting rid of the body. Otherwise, shame would kill me before anyone recommended jail.

After a while, the electricity went off in the whole hotel. Someone must have engineered that. I guess it was in the plan. It was unnecessary though; I saw no one loiter in the premises.

Suddenly, I saw Paul hurry out through the reception with a Ghana-Must-Go sack poised on his shoulder, big enough to haul a human being as diminutive as Lillian in it. He came around to the trunk of my car and gently placed the sack into it. It contained the dead body of the woman I’d sexually killed. 

Suddenly, the hotel’s light came back on. Paul shut my trunk and gave me a nod to move on. I put fire in my car and drove off in a trice.

I drove for a few minutes and then veered into the expressway. There were curtains of grasses by the sides. And jungles were deep inside. I found a perfect spot and parked.

I got out. The place was dead dark, silent and empty. Though, I pried. Then I quenched my headlights and depended on the moonlight. I opened my trunk, and unzipped the sack to confirm it was her in it. Lillian’s face sent me a chill and I felt my heart bolting into my throat. Each breath became heavy for me again.

 I wasn’t proud of what I was about to do. I managed to lift her out of the trunk. I hauled her into the bush and dumped her. I scurried back into my car and purred away.

I drove into my compound and parked. Once out of the car, I was faced by the block of four flats where my family and Lillian’s family lived. Suddenly Henrietta, her twelve years old daughter appeared   on the balcony from the living room to see if my car was a cab returning her mother home. She waved at me and I did back. Then she went back inside.

I stared at the sky, the moon looked exactly like Lillian’s dead face, and real tears trickled down from my eyes. I quickly wiped it.

I walked into my apartment like a sinner from church on a Sunday. My wife, Tessie was still up watching Big Brother Africa on the TV. My twin daughters, Honey and Melody had already gone to bed. I kissed my wife on the forehead, trying not to meet her eyes that would probe. She sensed something was wrong. She saved the pleasantries and gripes though. I headed to my daughters’ room to kiss them goodnight.