THEY CAME IN THE NIGHT II

They came in the night.

Consumed by sexual pleasure, I did not hear them, of course. But from the way my new girlfriend jumped from under me, I know for sure that they did not come in the clichéd 'stealthily they crept' manner we had imagined in our primary schools' English composition.

One moment we were there- girlfriend and I- cocooned in bliss. The two by six Vono camp bed, with its sag of broken springs and screech of ancient nuts; the thin and mouldy mattress; the table in the corner with its warped top and peeling Formica; the old table cloth presently reincarnated as a curtain- tea stains, shattered hems and all; the ceiling that had managed to drip-drip all through the rainy season in mockery of the dry tap, all these, had in the throes of ecstasy gained the opulence of a honeymoon suite. This was a love scene.

Love scene interruptus...

The girlfriend starts. Turns; her face freeze-framed in the moon beam. Her mouth a large O. O as in orgasm? No Sir! I turn to the left sliding my penis out of her, inadvertently, with the same movement. A battering ram stares me down. One phallus out, one phallus in.

Girlfriend covers her mouth at the speed of involuntary motion. A loaded gesture. An empty gesture. What she means to cover she cannot. The ageing Raymond's blanket is flung against the lone couch, her dress is dangling in the air clinging to the tap with one shoulder-strap as the other soaks in an ugali sufuria hurriedly filled with water and thrust into the sink, her panties are playing blindfold to the kerosene stove, and I am still wedged between her thighs. Those thighs that are the colour of rich loam. Thighs that are still warm from mutual stimulation.

Rigor mortis, er, the post-coital equivalent has not yet set in...

I love you girlfriend signs. My right hand is pinned to my back with brute force, my left hand, as though still latched onto her love handles, is delicately pinned to my genitals. The left hand shots up and quickly signs back at her but a greasy pile of man blurs the communication line. He hulks over her, a beefy back to me and an evil leer, a penis as twisted as his mind even, towards her.

“Ahhh...!” I grunt kicking at him. He is both oblivious and out of reach. Two men in badly cut suits hurl me out of the door and in the few seconds it takes me to hit the ground outside, I feel like a feather plucked from my lovely bird. A bird that for all its glory is, like Shakespeare's Julius Ceaser, to be used as a carcass for hounds....



Excerpted From: The Stories I Forgot As a prelude to Phase II of A Kenyan Urban Narrative.... in development!