Women Of Steel | ✔

I

Dim sunlight streams from the small window space and the cracks in the roof into the small room, the clang of kitchen utensils from the kitchen merely a corridor away. Murmurs from the damp hallways can be heard if I strain my ears hard enough. The biting cold that seeps through from the floor to the mat is already a wake up call from me, if the loud noises aren't enough.

The mat I sleep on is uncomfortable and hard enough as it is, sleeping is another task rather than a comfort. How can one sleep when the taunts and insults never fail to reach your ears even from people from your own social level? How can one sleep when all you ever yearn, thirst and dream for is the blood of your enemies?

Sleep is merely an inconvenience.

As uncomfortable as laying on the mat is I do not want to get up to the day's activities and torture, another day of ridicules from the beast that is my husband, who never fails to remind me that I am nothing without him.

My room which I share with four other slaves is a plain room with mud walls, and several cracks in the wall that speak of its ancient existence. A lizard peeks his head through before disappearing from sight. The only source of light is the dim oil lamp by the door frame and every few seconds, it flickers.

I share a room with four slaves who despise me and in their hearts wishes to be me, or at least who I used to be.

My eyes are fully alert and trained as the flimsy, dirty curtain covering the door frame is swept open and a familiar figure enters.

"Dide, Demilade." The simple command in Yoruba has me stumbling to my feet.

The King's right hand man; Kosoko is a regular visitor, every morning he comes here and remind me of the things I am missing by refusing to bow to the king. He will have the finest food, the finest clothing and jewelry brought before me to taunt me. While the king speaks with brute words and an iron fist, Kosoko speaks with a saccharine and lying tongue and spews words of fake promises.

Both the king and his right hand are each deadly in their own way.

And every single time, I spit back at his face in defiance.

Then he will proceed to have me whipped in front of the palace as a warning to others. Then he will send me back to the slums where I will toil for hours endlessly until the moon shows it's face.

Every time they hope to break my soul and tame me, they fail awfully. Hell will freeze over a thousand times before I will kneel before the beast.

However this fateful morning the King's man does not have me whipped.

He looks desperate and weary with bloodshot eyes, like he has not slept for a thousand years. Even in the dim light I can glimpse the frown marring his dark face. He clutches the hem of his agbada defensively.

His attire is crumpled and wrinkled and the usual mocking smirk is wiped clean off his face.

Kosoko looks like a different man entirely and I am not sure whether to rejoice at his plight or be worried that only something dead serious can bring a pompous man like Kosoko to the lowest of the low.

I choose to mock him.

"You look like death." I speak the words out like a bullet, swift and quick to jab. The venom in my words and tone is too hard to ignore, it is thicker than the scent of frying food in the air.

Nothing can describe how much I despise this man.

The only emotion that slips off his carefully constructed mask is something eerily akin to fear. It takes me aback.