Dial episode 21

DIAL
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Sequence 21
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Dede stood up and turned on her brother angrily.
“That’s enough, brother!” she hissed desperately. “He said he didn’t do it, and I believe him, and I trust him, and we’re going to make this work! Please, brother, I beg of you, let him be! Lift whatever curse you have put on him!”
“This boy right here doesn’t respect you, just like he never respected my daughter!” Nana Bosomba said, and his voice was hard. “You’re just a number to him! One of the girls he had fun with, and you don’t mean a thing to him!”
“Stop it!” Dede screamed in anguish. “Please, stop it! Stop making things up! He’s sorry for what happened to Akos! I’ve really seen him shattered by it! What you have been doing to him these few days has changed him, brother, please!”
The man leaned back, obviously agitated. He flicked his right hand in the air, and a green apple appeared in his hand immediately.
Yes, he just snapped a green apple from the air, in my living-room…just like that.
And there were no green apples anywhere in my mansion!
I liked bananas and pineapples, berries, guavas…but I didn’t like apples, and so I never stocked them.
But this man, this wicked man, this evil man…he just snapped a green apple from the air just like that!
“Eiiiii!” I said with horror and jumped to my feet, moving away from him, not knowing what he was going to do with that green apple, and it struck terror into my heart.
“Wh-what are y-you going to do w-with th-that apple?” I asked, and my voice trembled badly.
“And what do we do with apples, Mr. Biko?” he asked calmly and bit into the apple angrily and began to chew.
“So, you believe the words of that boy over mine?” he asked Dede quietly.
“Yes, yes, I believe him!” Dede cried. “Please, stop trying to make him look bad, please! Just because you want your revenge on him for what happened to Akos…”
“Shut up!” Nana Bosomba shouted angrily then and got to his feet, and his face was now contorted with deep pain as he looked at his sister. “Revenge? You think this is all because of some stupid revenge? I don’t do revenges, Dede, you fool!”
Suddenly he stretched out his right hand toward the open door behind me, the one that led to the corridor that ended in my bedroom, and then he beckoned with his fingers.
Dede and I turned round, both of us expecting to see somebody standing there, but of course there was no one there.
I saw something however hurtling through the air toward us down the dark corridor…something rectangular and…
My MacBook!
This man just summoned my laptop with his fingers, and it was coming, hurtling through the air!
My laptop was travelling through the air!
I gasped with sudden horror, and then raced toward the corridor, desperately trying to grab the laptop in the air, but it swerved downward, passed through my legs, raced through the air, and then Nana Bosomba caught it deftly in his right hand.
I turned round with horror, telling myself that he possibly could not get through all my password barrier on that laptop!
Nobody could get past my passwords…
But yes, that damn man who could walk through the heaviest lock-down security system in the world most definitely would find a password on a laptop a piece of cake!
I should have known better than to lie!
He just flipped the laptop open, and when he turned it round to face Dede, my Dial List was open and showing.
And she saw her name, just below the name of Akos!
“Oh, God!” I moaned with horror as I stumbled forward blindly. “Dede, no, no, please no!”
She turned to face me, her lips trembling badly with the acute pain she was feeling, her tears blinding her as she put trembling fingers to her lips.
“Yao,” she whispered tremulously. “Tell me you didn’t type that, and I’ll believe you. Please tell me my brother used his powers to have my name appear on that list, and I’ll believe you! Tell me, Yao, please tell me you didn’t do this!”
And tears came to my eyes then.
I could’ve lied, yes. I could’ve said Nana Bosomba had used his evil powers to edit my list and put her name there, but as I looked at her broken face, I knew the lies were enough. She was so badly hurt, and it had been because of my stupidity, because of my mad obsession with my Dial List.
I was probably the richest man on the continent, but at that moment I felt like a helpless little baby. Trembling, I dropped to my knees in front of her, reached out and took her right hand.
“Dede!” I whispered with pain and remorse. “Yes, yes, I did it. I put your name there!”
“Yao!” she cried, and wrenched her hand free from mine.
“No, no, Dede, please don’t do that to me!” I whispered with pain. “It doesn’t mean a thing, my love. What I felt with you was different, and I fought myself over putting your name there! It is like an obsession, a sick canker in my soul that I can’t control once it hits me! Believe me, my love, I can delete that list right now for you! I behaved like a bastard, yes, and you have a reason to be angry, but please, forgive me! Don’t let this break us up, please!”
“You’re sick, Yao!” she hissed down at me as her tears fell on my upturned face, and to see the agony on her face, the pain wracking through her, the raw wound in her soul portrayed by her face, really killed me at that moment.
“Dede, no, no, please, I beg of you!” I whimpered with a tortured soul, and reached out to grab her thighs, but she moved away from me.
She knelt down in front of me and looked at me with pure embittered eyes.
“Look at me, Yao,” she said softly, and I looked into her face.
She grabbed the edge of the bathrobe and cleaned her face fiercely, and then she looked sadly at me.
“I’m not going to cry over you, Yao,” she said tremulously. “You don’t deserve my tears, and you don’t deserve any woman’s tears. When I walk out of your doors today, you’ll never see me again.”
“No!” I screamed, feeling the anguish her words brought to my heart, feeling raw agony for the very first time in my life. “Dede, please, please! I was stupid, yes. I was uncouth, yes! This is nothing but a silly, stupid act on my part, but I beg of you, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me like this. Forgive me!
Let me do the right thing! I’ve never begged any woman to stay in my life, ever! My father was hurt by my mother, and I grew up under his hatred, hating all women, hating love! He made me vow never to fall in love! I’ve never felt any inkling of love for any girl! Maybe the Dial List is my way of getting revenge for my father, because even now, I love my father fiercely!
But, right now, I’m willing to admit I have been wrong, Dede! Right now, I can tell you that I feel pain, a pain I’ve never felt for any woman before! Don’t throw this feeling away, Dede, please!”
“I am throwing it away because you’re not worth it, Yao Biko!” she screamed into my face.
She reached out and put a hand on my shoulder.
“You remember that I asked for more drink last night, don’t you?” she asked quietly.
I nodded.
“Yes, I suspected you wanted to get drunk before making love to me, and I didn’t want it that way! Any other girl I wouldn’t have minded, Dede. But I wanted you to come to me out of your own volition, not under the influence of alcohol!”
“Yes, Yao, you were right, I wanted to get drunk,” she said in a trembling voice as she looked into my eyes. “At that moment, if I had made love to you, it wouldn’t have had any meaning to me, because I wouldn’t have done it by my own will!”
“What are you talking about, Dede?” I asked painfully. “I don’t understand you!”
“You remember I told you Akos wrote a letter to me?” she asked softly, and again I nodded. “Yes, she told me about how much she loved you. With her last breath she begged me to try and save you from the wrath of her father. She had a simple plan…she said if I married you, or got close enough to you, her father would have no option than lift the curse off you.”
I looked at her with absolute shock.
“So, all this…all that we shared, you were pretending? It was an act?” I asked, and my head pounded with the terrible bitterness and pain I felt.
“At first, yes, up till the time I asked for more drink, Yao, I was pretending. I was just doing a favour for my dear Akos,” she said sadly. “I didn’t want to do it, but it was something she begged me to do before she died, and I could not deny her that. The plan was to marry you, because only that would appeal to my brother to release you. Later, I would’ve told my brother that I made a mistake, once the curse was off you…and then I would’ve walked away from you, my duty to Dede done!”
“Then, if you didn’t mean it, if it was just a plan, why did you make love to me, Dede?” I asked harshly, my pain raw. “You could’ve told me about it, and we would’ve pretended to be in love, and you wouldn’t have had to sleep with me!”
“You’ve not heard even one word that I’m telling you,” she said softly, shaking her head. “If I had told you, my brother would’ve known straight away that it was a plan. It had to come from you, from your heart! You really needed to want to marry me, and he would’ve known it was genuine, and released you! Like I said, up till the moment I asked for that drink, there was simply no way I was going to make love to you without being drunk, because that’s not the way I am! I don’t sleep with men I don’t love!”
“And so why did you?” I asked painfully. “When I left you last night why did you come after me in the bathroom? Did Akos’ ghost come and beg you to sleep with me?”
She pushed me fiercely in the chest, and she stood up, tears flooding her face.
“You fool, you bastard!” she screamed down at me. “When I came to you I wasn’t drunk! I came to you because I realized just how hopelessly I’ve fallen for you! Akos said so in her letter! She said I shouldn’t worry because she knew I would end up falling for you! And when I came to you, when we made love, it wasn’t because I was doing Akos a favour…it was because I loved you, and that I was seeing myself spending the rest of my life with you, and it gladdened my heart! I made love to you out of the love I felt for you!”
I stood up desperately, my face cut to shreds.
“So nothing has changed, Dede, my love!” I said desperately. “I messed up big time, I know, but I’m new at this love stuff! I’m not making any excuses, but please, I beg of you, cut me a piece of slack here! I’m learning the ropes! Please, understand and forgive me, give me a chance to redeem myself!”
She shook her head sadly.
“Don’t touch me, Yao, please, don’t!” she said painfully. “That’s how you would always see women…as numbers on your computer, you bastard! I’ll beg my brother to release you, not for myself but for Akos…but I never want to see you again. Ever!”
“Dede, oh, Dede, please!” I tried to hold her, but she pushed me away violently as her tears began again, and then she fled to the elevator, got in and soon she was on her way up.
The pain was like nothing I had ever experienced. I swung on Nana Bosomba.
“Are you happy now?” I bellowed furiously. “You must be satisfied now! You want me dead, Nana Wowo? Kill me, Nana Wowo! Strike me dead and kill me right now, Nana Wowo! I am simply tired of you and your bullshit! I’m tired of living in fear! You’ve destroyed me already so go ahead and finish it! Strike me dead, Nana Wowo!”
His eyes were like the embers of hell as he calmly bit into his green apple and looked at me.
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To be continued...