“Devil in White”
I sincerely hope this letter gets to you in good health and a fine frame of mind as I have always known you to be . Please do not waste your time in wishing me the same. By the time you will be reading this letter , I would be long dead with my fate decided, I should hope God decides to send me to purgatory, It is not that I have come to believe in your teachings on Purgatory, No , it is just that I have this strong belief that I deserve a lesser punishment from God as my only crime constitutes in taking my own life and not for ridding the earth of that beast that called herself my wife.
Comfort caused it all,
Do not read the letter with that look of surprise on your face as if you are not aware that she has been the jezebel that has ruined my life all this years. Right from those days when we both ate the forbidden fruit and were eventually forced by her family into an unplanned marriage that ruined my priestly dreams, well after all this years the wounds has healed and inwardly I have no regrets for not joining the priestly order, deep inside I believe I was divinely saved from that life of perpetual self denial through the Back doors. Of course , not joining the priesthood forced me into a desperate struggle for survival as everybody including my family gave up hope that I will amount to anything again in life. As painful as their rejection was and still is, it was the force that pushed me forward to struggle and achieve something in life to prove them all wrong, that my life was not worthless as they thought and making a mistake was not the end of one’s world. Yes you know I have turned out to be very successful in everything I have done since that unfortunate chapter in my history, comfort has always been then unfortunate chapter in my life’s pages. I have been successful everywhere; in business, politics except at home. All because of a woman that is supposed to be my wife. who ever gave her that name (Comfort)must be the worst satirist of a name giver that ever existed in the history of mankind. I command respect everywhere I go except where it matters most ;my home and worst of all before a woman who cannot even spell her name properly …Of course she has not done anything with her life after she offered herself to me to impregnate her, now I know she was only a trap sent to ruin my life.
If a man cannot find happiness at home, does he not have a right to find it elsewhere? I do not expect you, as a “Man of God” to know all this mundane things. If you have never done it before, you will never know it, so I will spare you the details. But being a man, who is close his end, I feel it a duty to tell everything. My life was falling apart because of Comfort and in a bid to get it back together, I reunited with Ene One of those village girls, I used to flirt with , way back in the days. She filled up a void in me, especially those times she used to call “HER MAN”, in a shrill feminine voice that usually turned me on. You can imagine the effect such respectful sweet name calling had on me especially considering the fact that comfort had made a constant mockery of my manhood so much, so that I wished, I had videotaped my first coital session with Ene , so that comfort would see that I am every inch a man that she complained I was not .
It gets to that point when the woman outside feels she is better than the one inside and It did not take long for Ene to start making demands that I pay her bride price and bring her home as a wife like it is done for every other African woman instead of playing “ Hide and Seek Teenage Games” . in spite of my hatred for Comfort I still cherished my marriage vows and the only thing that will make me break it would be if another woman would give me a male child that Comfort could not conceive for me. You know, God closed her womb since we both disobeyed by succumbing to our teenage orgies, but for all her rudeness and evil ways , Comfort was still the mother of my only child and I at least had a duty to keep the marriage even though it was killing me gradually, at least , for the sake of our daughter patience.. After a long period of pestering and nagging from Ene, I finally opened up and told her everything in black and blue, she had to conceive before thinking of any wedding plans between us. I needed a heir to my vast business empire and if at all she hopes to be my wife, legally, she should give me a son or else she will always remain the woman outside.
You can imagine the surprise on my face when she uttered the same words Comfort had used on me all this year’s … So you think you are a man also !
The slap I gave her was the first I had ever given any woman and it was hard indeed … it was the result of an accumulation of pent up anger and frustrations... in the heat of our argument and my demand for an explanation for the meaning of what she had said , she told me to ask comfort my supposed wife ; who John was … and that it is only her who could tell the true man who is the father of her daughter . I find it funny that this john who I will never get to know and who I have erroneously fathered his child bears the same holy name as yourself, but that is the way of the world ; a bad man bearing a good man’s name …
The drive home from Ene’s place was by far the longest drive ever to my house, the memories came flooding back in a rush. All at once the sudden realisation that I had been calling another man’s child my daughter, and that comfort had all this year’s held me down for nothing with her lies and falsehood. The thoughts were just too painful and it pushed me towards the borders of sanity.
… she was at home watching African magic when I bursted in and demanded from her , who john was ?
John is a real man she said a man who knows how to be a man not just some plastic man like you.
Perhaps she felt I was joking, Perhaps she taught I will never discover the truth, maybe she thought this was one of those days when she could open her mouth and say any rubbish to me. It is unfortunate that she will make it to hell and so I will not get the opportunity to ask her what she meant when she said those obscene words of hers, God bless her soul in hell…
My first punch threw her to the ground, I had expected her to rise and receive more, collect more punches in revenge for all this years of pitiless torture which she had inflicted on me, but the very loud scream from her was the last sound she ever made, as she started making convulsive gestures on the ground in the pool of her blood.
Patience our daughter, sorry her daughter and the security guard who had heard the loud unusual scream rushed in with questioning glances first at the fallen woman and then at me, when it became obvious that I was absorbed in a guilty silence , they quickly rushed the dying woman to the hospital.
My thought raced around the consequence of my inadvertent actions , there were two options which stared me in the eyes; first to face a period of a long and circuitous criminal trial with two witness who will invariably testify against me upon which I will be the subject of the hangman’s noose or the option of taking my own life there and then without the pain of staying alive to watch my enemies laugh at me… I choose the suicide option.
I believe that, you, who have never betrayed our friendship through all this years and who has so constantly served as mediator in all my quarrels with my wife comfort will be kind enough to tell the true story of what has happened in a manner that the public will be brought into notice as to the true nature of things regarding our unfortunate of Myself and Comfort.
With dearest love from purgatory.
Through it all the priest felt the grip of guilt, he could smell his own stench of hypocrisy as he sweated all over . His best friend was now dead; dead men knew all the secrets living men do not know and he could see the ghost of his dead friend staring at him menacingly with cursing fingers for ruining his life all this year’s…
There was a brisk knock on the door and patience bursted into the priest office with tears in her eyes, The priest took her into his arms and patted her.
Perhaps it was time to tell her, that he was not just a Rev. Fr John as she has known him to be all this years but her biological father, each sigh axed his heart. The burden of the secrets that had been carried for years was too much. All this years he had deceived the world, betrayed his best friend and denied his own daughter.
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