Dial episode 41

DIAL
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Sequence 41
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©Aaron Ansah-Agyeman
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The nurse turned and scowled darkly at me.
“Would you please wait outside?” she asked coldly. “I’m busy at the moment. Will see you when I’m done.”
“Busy?” I asked, still advancing. “Busy discussing fashion when kids are out there needing your care?”
She turned to face me then, her face angry.
“There are nurses with them, mister!” she said curtly. “And no need for you to be so acidic! I attended to the princess right now, and we’re just selecting a design for her big occasion. It’s not what you’re thinking, sir.”
My eyes bored into her relentlessly.
“So, are you done here?” I asked quietly. “There’s something I want to discuss with you.”
“And whatever it is can’t wait?” she asked.
I shook my head as I took off my little bag from around my neck, opened a zipper, and extracted the two letters.
“No, it can’t wait,” I said as I pulled out a chair facing the table and sat down.
The princess was still glaring at me, but she had not uttered a word so far. Her beautiful jaw worked furiously though, and her anger made her huge eyes glow.
“You see, I want to pay for Mr. Tawiah’s daughter to be taken to the hospital in the city,” I said. “I want Nurse Afua Takyiwaa to go with them, and deliver these two letters. One is to an officer at the Ministry of Health. I donated some ambulances to them some time ago, and I want him to send one of them here. I’ve requested for beds too for the health post here.”
“An ambulance?” she whispered, her face lighting up immediately as she pulled out another chair and sat down. “Oh, thank you very much! Please, who are you?”
“I’m Yao Biko,” I said a bit quietly as my anger dissipated.
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She gasped suddenly and looked at the royal princess sharply.
“Oh, you’re that man!” the nurse said, and I nodded with a smile.
“Yes, I’m that man,” I said without a smile.
“Oh! Then I’ll have to go too! Oh, that’s so grand! Yesu! Oh! Oh!” she said, all excited, the princess absolutely forgotten for the moment. “There are some urgent things we need too. I’ve made requests for them, but they never get approved.”
I nodded.
“You got a copy?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, yes, Mr. Biko,” she said and stood up again.
She walked to an old filing cabinet in the corner behind the princess and began to rummage through.
The princess and I looked at each other again. She was supporting her chin on the back of her left hand, whilst her right hand drummed a soft rhythm on the fashion calendar in front of her.
The nurse came back with a file which she put on the table, opened it, and began to quickly flip through. She made a grunting explanation when she saw a sheet she was looking for, and then carefully unclipped it from the file.
She handed it to me and I quickly glanced through it.
All necessities, nothing I could see that was vain glory. I reached out for a pen and quickly wrote on the sheet, giving it an ‘ATTN’ clause to the Health Minister. I signed and dated it, then handed it to her.
She read it quickly, and her eyes widened with sudden shock and delight.
“He would provide them?” she asked, her voice awed.
“He would,” I said simply and stood up. “Please, hurry up. That little girl needs to be moved.”
“I’ll get on it immediately, Mr. Biko!” she exclaimed, beaming from ear to ear. “Oh, you’re such a darling. My name is Jennifer.”
She hugged me, and then she moved quickly toward the door, and a moment later she went out without so much as a look at the royal princess. It seemed that in her excitement, the principal nurse had totally forgotten the haughty girl.
I smiled at the princess, and it wasn’t a nice smile. When I turned to leave she stood up quickly.
“Wait!” she said, her voice a whiplash. “Don’t leave yet!”
I turned and fixed her with a cool gaze.
“You and I have nothing to say to each other,” I said quietly. “Unless, of course, you want me to lie on the floor in front of you, which I won’t. I hope you were able to get your sheep, and some goats, yesterday.”
She smiled sourly and came round the desk. She walked up to me and stood very close to me. I saw every plane of that beautiful face as her eyes blazed daggers at me.
“You have money, evidently, and you know important people, so you think you can come here and walk on everybody?” she asked acidly. “You think you can come here and corrupt our customs?”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Corrupt your customs? No, Princess. Good customs should be encouraged. But telling people to throw themselves on the ground just because you’re passing is stupid, don’t you think? What if they hurt themselves?”
“I didn’t institute that custom!” she hissed angrily. “It is something we came to meet! Something that was instituted by the gods!”
“Well, that might be true,” I said gently. “Maybe, it had its good uses many years ago, but don’t you think that it has now outlived its usefulness? Customs should enrich the lives of citizens, not degrade them! Customs indeed!”
“So, suddenly you’re wise in the ways of our living, aren’t you, ugly old man!” she shot spitefully.
“We all aspire to greater wisdom, princess,” I told her gently. “But wisdom that borders on the peripheries of stupidity only irks me! For example, how could someone as pretty as you, aiming to be the future Queen Mother, allow men to drive your mother out of the village into the bush, to live all alone in that forest, because of a stupid suspicion that she’s a witch?”
“You don’t understand a thing, because you’re a stupid, senile moron!” she said spitefully. “She is a witch! And she killed my father! And she wants to kill me too!”
“Goodness me!” I said with unfeigned disgust. “A witch? Your mother? The woman who carried you in her womb for nine months, gave birth to you, nursed you at her nipples and cleaned your sh*t? She didn’t kill you so many years ago, but now that you’re old enough, she wants to eat you? Are you that brain-washed?”
“That’s what she wants!” she said viciously. “To plunder and destroy good things!”
I took a step away from her with disgust.
“I don’t have time to stand here and listen to your drivel,” I said acidly. “One day I hope that old man of yours gives you daughters, and I hope your daughters chase you into the forest too for being a witch! Then you’ll feel how it boils down in the soup, princess! Some princess you are!”
“You filthy, stinking bastard!” she said and slapped me across the face with her left hand, quite viciously.
I gritted my teeth sharply as the pain flashed across my eyes, and for a brief moment I had to fight with myself to prevent my hands from lifting her up and slamming her against the wooden planks.
As God was my witness, I had never been so incensed in my life!
I wanted to slam her across the table and beat the hell out of her…but then again, my Pappy had taught me well, and I could not raise a hand at a woman, no matter how horrible that woman was, like this damn beautiful and naughty royal princess standing in front of me.
“You know, I can’t understand how a gentle soul like Maame Ntiriwaa could give birth to someone as cruel and as horrible as you,” I said quietly. “Between the two of you, you’re more of a witch!”
She was breathing hard, and she took a step close to me.
“I’m going to make you beg for mercy one day, Mr. Biko!” she whispered fiercely.
“Beg for mercy? From you? Why on earth would I ever do a thing like that? You don’t have anything I want, Abena Adobea,” I said acidly.
She smiled in a nasty kind of way that made her look even more beautiful.
“Really?” she asked sultrily, taking another step toward me. “You think I haven’t noticed the way you look at me? You’re all the same, all of you men! Lust! It rules your heads, your minds and your souls! You can’t think straight because lust crowds your very essence of being! Oh, yes, Mr. Biko! I see what you want, and I see it in your eyes, but you’re never going to have it!”
She was quite close now, and she suddenly put her arms around my neck and drew close to me, moulding that delectable body into mine, gently swishing her taut breasts into my chest, bringing her lips closer to mine, her eyes glazed.
And then – oh dear, oh woes – she turned round slowly and sensuously, still tight against me, and put that incredible derriere close to my groin, leaned back, and rolled those soft mounds seductively across my loins!
I fought it!
Oh, goodness me…I fought it hard!
Damn, I didn’t want to get an erection, no!
I didn’t want her to see any arousal, and weakness, any effect of her murderous antics on me, and so I thought of ways to take my mind off her sexy grind!
If I could dissociate my mind, I wouldn’t be aroused, and so I imagined lions chasing and eating me!
And I pictured alligators biting into my manhood!
Desperately, I imagined myself burning in fire as little devils cut portions of my flesh and let blood flow!
Oh, dear, I imagined a whole lot of things!
I even imagined a car knocking me down and an anaconda swallowing me whole!
An anaconda in my car, sent from Wowo, a gigantic Nana Bosomba of Wowo anaconda, swallowing my head and chest…
I imagined a whole lot of things, trying to take my mind off the sensual and sinuous pleasure her derriere grinding against me was invoking…but it was like taking a green apple from Nana Bosomba.
O, Awurade me Nyankopon…akurase girl yi y ε anyε n papaapa!
My damn pole just rose up fiercely in my shorts, and my hands fell on that sweet grinding waist of hers. She reached backward and linked an arm around my neck, and offered her beautiful sweet lips to me.
I groaned and pulled her waist deeper against mine, and then my lips began to descend on hers.
She laughed throatily, nastily, and suddenly she slipped out of my arms and took three steps away, turning to stare at me with fury, her mocking eyes descending to my groin area where my shorts was distended by my hard-on.
She giggled with a hand across her lips and pointed to my erection.
“Oh, look, a hypocritical k⊃te! ” she said, and giggled insanely, her mean eyes looking at me with jeering fun. “Look, he claims he hates me, but what is that? Oh, Mr. Biko, you really want to slip that nasty old thing into a sweet virgin like me? Oh, shame on you, Mr. Biko, big shame on you!”
And, in all my life, I had never felt such humiliation!
“Is that a wet patch?” she asked suddenly, and I looked down, and saw that indeed the point of my club had formed a little wet patch in my blue jeans. “Oh, poor, poor old man’s stick is dripping! It has accumulated like a dam and wants to be milked! Mr. Biko! When was the last time you got into something sweet?”
I could have killed her that instant…easily!
I was so ashamed of myself! She had wound me like a toy, and discarded me out of her cruel grasp like a dirty, greasy rag!
She looked at me with absolute contempt.
“You damn hypocrite!” she said disdainfully. “Strutting around town flaunting your money and power, as if you’re a different kind of breed, but underneath you’re just a pathetic, lecherous dirty old man like all of them, aren’t you?”
Her words bit into me, and hurt me strangely in a spiritual kind of way. No woman had ever filled me with such equal doses of fury and violence at the same time.
I walked toward her deliberately. She stood her ground and didn’t flinch.
“You gave me an erection and you think that’s an achievement?” I asked her coldly, my voice filled with contempt. “My dick doesn’t have a conscience, girl! I sleep with girls for fun…old, young, thin, fat, dark, fair…I don’t give a hoot! My dick doesn’t discriminate! Any woman can give me an erection, baby, so you’re not special in any way! It took you how long to make me erect…five minutes? Your mother achieved it in less than a minute!”
She gasped and took a step back, her face suddenly filled with a bitterness and dismay that washed the hatred away.
“You slept with my mother?” she asked in a fierce, troubled whisper.
“Oh, she’s your mother now, you piece of cheap frill?” I asked her savagely. “She’s no longer a witch? You know the difference between you and your mother, Adobea? She’s the type men take home to meet their mothers! And you’re the type we screw and throw away like tissue!”
I was expecting it!
She slapped me again, with more venom!
Her hand flew against my cheek, hard and vengeful! It stung me to my very core, but I did not flinch.
“That’s all you know,” I said quietly, and then I turned away from her and walked toward the door.
“I hate you!” she grated out savagely behind me. “Oh, I hate you, Yao Biko! The Okomfo says there’s a death curse on you! How I wish you’ll die a miserable death filled with pain and torture! I wish you’ll rot whilst still alive, and even the flies wouldn’t touch your stinking body! I wish you’ll grow old and die like the pathetic piece of cow dung you are, slowly and painfully, you damn bastard!”
That stung.
And it was so damn cruel and painful!
I guess, of all her vicious words, those last parting shots really hit me.
They touched something deep inside me, and I stopped in my tracks. Suddenly, I remembered my Pappy, and I remembered how miserable my life was. A king in the city I had been, but here I was, reduced to a an object for a haughty girl’s scathing insults.
I was all alone, scared, growing old, rejected, aimless and completely lost. The sheer helplessness of my situation hit me, and my heart thudded, and then I felt the pinpricks of tears in my eyes.
I turned round slowly and looked at her, and I couldn’t help the tears that rolled slowly down my right cheek.
I tried to speak, but my lips trembled, and for a minute I could not speak.
“You’re not beautiful inside, Abena Adobea,” I finally said in a trembling hurt voice.
She looked at me, and slowly the raging embers of hatred in her eyes dimmed, and as I continued to stare at her she dropped her eyes suddenly, and clamped her lower lip between her teeth, almost scuffing one of her sandaled feet on the floor.
I reached out and brushed the tears from my cheek, and then I turned and wordlessly left the office, leaving Abena Adobea behind.