MARRED

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - BACK DOWN MEMORY LANE

Surprise, Suprise!! As I like celebrations like this, I just hit 200 followers on Facebook! So, this quick update and the next one will be in appreciation. JazakumuLlaahu Khairan.

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Ahmad

Flashback

"Hey wake up. It's too dangerous here. Mama always says to me not to come here." A scrawny girl said, looking at me with her bulgy eyes.

"Then why are you here?" I asked, barely able to open my eyes. I had not been fed since I came to, and Dagger promised I wasn't having anything until we left Nigeria.

"Me? I am bringing the paper." She replied in her semi-defective English Language.

I tried to sit. "I don't mean that. Why are you delivering papers in the first place, and... here... of all places?"

She chuckled. "You think the paper is a good thing? Sniper is not a good person."

I had heard that name before. Sniper.

"Then...what are you doing with him and the other bad people like him?"

She shrugged and her already ragged dress fell from her bony shoulders.

"I want house to stay. Sniper sister, Lala is good to me. I stay in her house. Paper is what I give them in Oloye Street for her."

So, she was returning the favour of giving her a roof over her head?

"Why do you need a place to stay in the first place?" I asked, fully opening my eyes. When she looked at me like I was mad, I asked "What about your parents'?"

"Oh," she looked at her hands nervously clinging to her dress. "I...run away from Papa. He want me to be second wife."

I looked at her face, her torn clothes and dirty face, feeling disgusted at the fact that an adult tried to defile a child, and her father at that!

"How did you escape?"

"I use window. Inside Zeeworld, they hang curtain from window and jump down. I jump down like that too. Don't talk me. You look like a fresh boy. How they kidnap you to Oloye Street? Lala say you come from Abuja."

"A fresh boy?" I asked with a raised brow.

"Yes. The rich boys Papa tell me they will take me one day..."

I smiled, despite my state.

"What else did your Papa promise you before he tried to rape you?"

She looked at down at her entwined hands again. "He was drunk. Mama say drunk men can do many things, because they lose their sense... But... Mama and Charity was not drunk..." Then she drifted off, and quickly changed topics. "Come, let me help you out. If Lala is right, you will never see your family again. Don't you want to see them?"

"Of course, I do."

"Then, you wait for me. I will come back and take you out. You can run abi?"

I couldn't. but I was willing to try, even if I died.

She nodded and touched my bare feet. "You are a really fresh boy. Your feet so soft but you run o. I cannot to back you."

She ducked her head out of the pit to scout the outer environment. Then she turned back to me.

"I will come back soon. Don't make move."

And like that, she crawled out of the pit through the upper opening. It was then that I took note of my environment. It was a tiny pit with an iron bar above. It was slightly muddy at my feet and I didn't even want to look. Not that I would see it anyways. It was pitch dark. The walls were dug for purposes like this clearly. Dumping victims like myself in here, on their way out.