Furtively, rivulet of tears ran down my cheeks
caused by the mutilating thought of all that had happened, coupled with distress from the thick-skinned bed and the unpleasant smell plumbing into my corner, which is just next to a sordid toilet in a small room designed for a prisoner awaiting execution. Yes, I was sentenced to death by hanging for attempted rape and murder.
It was at a king-sized neighborhood, during a Saturday’s road walk exercise that I first met Jane. The bright morning sunlight had just begun showing its unique beauty when I saw her. She had a mercury-red hair that plunged over her shoulders. She had a shapely figure and her constellation-blue eyes set my heart a-thump. I was stupefied at her curvilinear waist and burnished complexion. “You’re sterling” I mumbled. A set of dazzling, angel-white teeth gleamed as she smiled and her crescent shaped eyebrows inclined slightly to me staring at her. I yelped at being caught. I noticed her sea-nymph ears and elegant nose. I was lost in reverie and didn’t realize I was about going into a ditch, warning me of the impending danger was an old man who angrily cringed. I was among those mesmerized by her as she jogged pass. I hurriedly summoned courage and approached her with the compliment of “hello, I wish to say that you are unspeakably beautiful”. She smiled while saying thank you with her soothing voice. An ounce of courage to communicate forward was mounted on me as I noticed her timorous personality. Coincidentally, she was the new neighbor living in the luxurious beach house with a stunning view. “Indeed this is a wonderful day”, I thought to myself while getting her contact.
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I invited Jane over for dinner but she abruptly refused the invitation. I didn’t bother probing further after she said “maybe some other day but you can call anytime” with her soothing voice. I would call her on calculated times to give severally reviewed words that would pass the message of “I care” to her, hoping she saw me as a caring person. I finally struck up an acquaintance with her. She seemed to possess an inscrutable personality as she was living all alone in such a luxurious house and was indoors most often than not. I couldn’t know more about her as she also seemed reserved; wouldn’t allow me explore her personality. I just accepted her for who she was. She was lovely altogether, this cleared off my fishy thoughts about her.
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I would make meticulous paintings of her which I was proficient at, buy her a superfluity of prodigious gifts, show her unexpected affection even in public though she detested it, talk to her and listen to all she said even to the silliest of it. On certain occasions when we were less busy or done with work, we would go to fun places together. Sometimes at evenings, I would take her to the beach, and we would lie on the cold cozy sands and watch the moon’s delicate light turning the world a-flame with silver, sometimes, the floating stars in the sky. I would always cook for her, I like it when she complemented my food. Whenever I slept over in Jane’s house, I would wake up early to get breakfast prepared for her and usher her into the new day with romantic gestures. This incomparable show of love, I thought, would remain forever.
I relished being with her alone, especially when she looked straight into my eyes with her constellation-blue eyes which always accompanied an aura of complete tranquility that would make still. She would lap her tongue around her lips-one sweet smooth motion, sending cold chills wheezing through me and pacing way for all uncertainty about her to flow out of me as we would hold our gaze in the thick air of love, allowing her heart shaped lips prowling for mine as she would cling to my arm. Her lips always tasted strawberry sweet. Yes! I was sure anything that was as red as her lips had to be sweet, so I reacted when I first kissed Jane. She would give a long, deep moan with pleasure, and wouldn’t stop kissing and pulling me more to herself, as I would normally cup her face with my hands and we’d smooch. Our love was enshrouded from the world.
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It was circa three weeks after we met. The sunlight roused more beautiful colors to unveil a wonderful day. It’s another Saturday morning, and I was ready for my Saturday’s road walk exercise with Jane. No sooner had I stop thinking of Jane than a message from her came to my phone asking me to hurry down to her house. “She didn’t sound alright, what could be the matter?” I soliloquized and battled with my ominous thoughts while running down to her house. I arrived her house some minutes later, waving to me was Jane behind her brown wooden louvers. She looked shell-shocked. I immediately ran towards her to release an avalanche of questions, that would help me know what was wrong with her. Entering her living room, I saw a middle aged man on the floor with a knife stocked in his belly and his clothe matted with blood stains. Before I could exclaim, I was hit on the head with a baton by Jane. I couldn’t even screech but fell unconsciously to the ground. It was a long black out, about a minute. I woke up to the wailing of air-raid sirens, my once immaculate clothe was now matted in blood stains, I had my head swathed in bandages and my hands braced with cuffs. I couldn’t think straight as I was trying to get an explanation from a police officer just beside me who rudely told me to wait till we get to the station. I saw the now dead middle aged man being carried out on a stretcher to an ambulance with Jane crying beside him.I shouted inquisitively “what’s going on Jane?”, “murderer!” she yelled at me “rapist! you’ll pay for all you’ve done”. “What do you mean?” was one of the barrage of questions that colonized my mind which I naively asked. I was in an aura of untold vagueness also curbed in great silence, trying to understand why Jane would hit me with a baton and say such a ridiculous thing to me, while in a police cab moving down to the station. “I need to call my lawyer” I said gently to the police officer who elucidated further in response to my request for more details on what was going on, he said, a woman named Jane called out to the police, requesting for immediate help as her husband was struggling with a neighbor who held a knife against him. She said her husband was protecting her from being raped by the neighbor. On reaching the location, we saw you lying unconscious on the floor, close to dead Mr. Green Albert as the crying Mrs. Jane Albert claimed to have knocked you out with a baton immediately after you stabbed her husband to death.
I’m being framed” I cried out. I could see the light now in debacle, as I remembered the numerous times she said “I would soon own everything and you’d help me achieve it”. It made no sense to me then, but now, seeing I played the pawn role in getting her Mr. Green’s wealth and my phone, my only shred of evidence against Jane’s accusations went missing in her house. I came to know about Mr. Green Albert as the founder and CEO of Sologan enterprise, a multi-billion-dollar company, which Jane wanted all to herself.
We were in the court room two weeks later. The judges determined that my pieces of evidence were too vague to be fairy worked on. I had lost hope before the Jury gave a verdict of me being guilty. I could see Jane tittering as I was sentenced to death by hanging for attempted rape and murder.
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I terribly feared for myself as I stood on a cart with a noose applied to my neck. It’s my abrupt end” I mumbled. I could see my mom hollering in pains, my younger sister crying uncontrollably and I, running down memory lane thought about the time I spent together with Jane; thinking about the incomparable love I showed Jane and how she betrayed my love for her. As the cart was being rolled away, tears cascaded down my eyes to flooded streams, l was left dangling from the rope. I gasped for air against the compression of the noose and against the weight of my own body, I was undergoing a more prolonged and painful death, I was dying of strangulation. Against my will, I took a glimpse at the woman I indelibly loved and about to bite the dust as I took my last breath, I cried out, so loudly, “Was I wrong to love?”
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