The excitement of travelling in an airplane for the first time was terrific, even as we had only to settle for economy-class. My neatly packed luggage laid beside me all the time in the airport, and so was my aunt’s. I had made myself a promise of not falling victim to the macho-looking touts whom Lagos returners usually narrate do seize items from innocent newcomers. The excitement of having to scare them with confidence innundated my thoughts; I was an exemplary smart gentleman, my nacissist self kept presenting.
My aunt's name is Diana; she is tall, heavily-built, and regularly assumes a devil-may-care countenance. She was a jovial companion to be with, and that betrayed her flair and exuberant youth to me. She seldomly wore a disciplined look but like a billy goat who could never hid it's identity, the scent of my aunt's past was always laid open to me by her actions.
Aunt Diana is the youngest daughter of my maternal grandmother. She was in her mid thirty but her looks favoured one merely out of her teen. Her husband owns a house in Lagos: a five bedroom bungalow. After series of stubbornness and acute disturbances, my aunt had encouraged her sister, my mother, to allow me stay a month with her family in the commercial city. My mum was happy at the thought of sending her second son who she thought was currently possessed of the devil away for a while: she wanted a breather.
On arrival at the Murtala Muhammed international airport, we boarded a taxi. My dream of being in Lagos was finally fulfilled, I thought as I engaged my eyes to the sights of the magnificent city. To heighten the electrifying atmosphere I found myself in, I slide my hand into my trouser pocket to get my smartphone. My intention was to put on repeat one of my favourite music from Fireboy. I wanted to feel being a cosseted Davido while listening to one of Fireboy's ego-inducing songs. Upon reaching out to my pocket, my heart skipped a bit: I couldn't find the phone. Not until I unbuckled my belt to draw out the phone from my inner trouser did I become settled. I smiled as I assumed how wise and witful I was to safe-deposit the phone in such an impassable enclave. I was double what Lagos could offer, I allowed myself a smile as I thought. I took my hands to my ear in a move meant to settle my headphone properly but could only feel the soft contours of my ears. This time I knew I was defeated to it; I have lost my expensive headphone! I didn't care about the non-possession of the accessory, but on how it got lost even while clasped to my both ears. At this point I concluded that a local man is always a local man; atleast Lagos didn't steal my smartphone on my first visiting, I consoled myself.
I and my aunt arrived at the destination compound before dawn to the welcome of the husband and their children: two females, one male. The location and construction of the modern structure was par excellence. Decorative trees and shrubs adorned the outside while the interior had the looks of one from a recent Hollywood movie.
My cousins were at the first view nice children and none exceeded age seven. The boy talked less demanded he is served meals timely when hungry. The two girls, coincidentally twins, were the direct opposite: they ate less and frightfully talked more. They were those kind of millennial young girls who would inexorably tell you who you are and not who you think you are.
Normally even with irritative cousins, my life in Lagos would have been perfectly okay, not untill the arrival of another individual. It is always said that when the devil is too busy to attend a locality, he sends in a girl, I was forced to uphold it as true.
Now, as someone who from age thirteen had coursed the holy Bible from cover-to-cover, I was less concerned about having to live in the same house with a girl who thought she was beautiful enough to go to a university: she came to spend a week in order to write the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in a nearby venue under the justification of being the daughter of one of my aunt's friends. If Satan was away and busy, his demons in the embodiment of my girl cousins were having a field day. These kids worked themselves up by monitoring and matching my gazes in her direction, remarking openly about how I wasn't man enough to befriend the girl.
The new girl went with the name Angela. She was young, moderately built and stunningly beautiful. Her manners exposed good parentage: she kept a careful and respectful demeanor, I gladly fell for. Now, inorder to be much closer to Angela, I had to feign being a good mathematician. She was actually jittery when revising her maths, and my uncensored mind thought her attention would be gotten if I could tutor her in maths. Shucking off the reminiscence of my recent “E”,“F”,“C”,“C” maths grades aside, and putting on the regalia of a thoroughly-bred mathematician, I emerged from my room to the sitting room to do what I knew I couldn't. Upon sighting her in the sitting room, my feet could merely carry my weight any longer. Notwithstanding, I went on, not to her but towards the dinning. There like a thief who just escaped being caught on a first outing, I watered down some heavily-mixed local Snapp my aunt's husband never lacked in the dinning. To restore the dignity which I thought was stoled together with my confidence, I took three more cup-full of the powerful mixture: I was determined to prove to the girl how good an Ibibio man could be when he meant it.
With the coming of the wine came confidence; I sauntered into the living room, cared less to greet the girl she thought she was, and confidently took the pen from her. Completely unknowing of myself, I sat adjacent to her, her bare laps smouldering mine intermittently, but my wine-governed mine took zero notice of this. I was at the mercy of that substance — God knows what it was. Angela seemingly unruffled about the surprise development betrayed a feeling she kept locked: she was pleased. After some minutes of pointless illustrations to the shame of mathematics, the wine in me took my hand to her body, drawing her closer for a kiss. Even in the excess of wine, I could hear her say “you are all mine,” as she drew me also towards herself for a kiss. I was certainly infatuated; I felt elated, and my mind kept reverberating: “what wine cannot do, too much wine could do.”
#fiction
P.S:
✍️ I have never travelled via airplane.
✍️ I have never gone to Lagos, the commercial city.
✍️ None of my aunts would ever allow a young and yet beautiful girl to reside with me freely in a house without installing a “CCTV camera” as safeguard, never!
✍️ I am not bad in mathematics, it's actually my best subject.
✍️ I am yet to see such princess charming that would require me to be intoxicated before I could approach her. 😁
© Daniel Daniel
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