Son of No Man

 

Prologue

For the twenty minutes that I watched him from my second-floor bedroom window, the figure did not move. He was a silhouette in the dark, standing tall against the perimeter wall that met the hedge of my across-the-street neighbor, ominous and haunting, as if silently daring me to step out and confront him.

Ours was one of many semi-detached homes that made up the Valley Springs Estate in Kiambu. The homes were nestled amongst tall trees and sprawling woodlands, a perfect home away from the never-ending bustle of Nairobi city. Each house was surrounded by high perimeter walls, with only the red tiles and the top windows of the houses visible from the streets.

Streetlights lit the street between the homes with a haunting yellowish tint, a light so unflattering to the beautiful homes around it that it often felt as though one was walking into a nightmare when they walked the streets of Valley Springs at night.

On one of these walls, on the opposite side of the road, was where this shadow stood, firmly planted against the wall, just about beyond the stray headlights of any passing car.

He seemed to have longer arms than usual; this silhouette and his outline bore a striking resemblance to someone I knew, not standing quite straight, leaning a little to his left.

But was he watching me, or was I losing my mind? I hadn’t been quite okay over the past few weeks, maybe months, maybe years, so could I be hallucinating, my mind now a cobweb of depression and haunting memories struggling to pull out of the corners I had so crudely thrust them?

At this moment, my wife walked in, and the sweet scent of her lilac body wash wafted in with her, and for a fleeting moment, I forgot about the shadow outside and turned to her. She was rubbing oil in her hands and patting some on her glistening face. Her face was fresh and sparkling, like a dewy daisy in the morning sun. The scent of her bedtime perfume also filled the room shortly after she walked in from the bathroom, a pleasant combination of lavender and lilac.

“Honey, what’s going on?” She asked, walking up to me, “Who are you watching, and should I be jealous?”

She chuckled as she said that, walking up to me and looking outside. She was of a curvy frame,  with an extravagantly gifted backside, standing at just 5.2 with radiant dark skin and piercing brown eyes. She wore locks of pitch black hair that hung down to her neck, hair that was now tightly packed in her maroon bonnet. A septum ring straddled her small, perky nose. Ovelia Muthoni was her name, my wife, my confidant, my sense of direction.

“Um, nothing,” I said, pulling back the curtain and stepping away from the window, walking towards her. She put a hand on me, walked past me, and stared back out of the window, trying to see what I saw.

“Are you okay?” She asked, and those piercing eyes were now tender with concern, “You have literally been standing here for an hour.”

“Actually, I have literally only been standing here for around twenty minutes or so. Literally.”

She slapped me lightly on my shoulder and walked to bed.

“Come to bed, dear,” She said. “You can’t stress over someone who might not even be there.”

“You literally don’t believe me. Literally.”

“Okay, stop,” She said, half seriously. “I know I literally misuse that word, but I also want you to know that you also misuse the word just.” She pulled back the duvets, and once again, concern spread on her face. “Are you sure you are okay, Honey? Because recently you have been zoning out a lot, staring off in the distance as if you saw a ghost, your face all pale and scared.”

“Oh, really?” I replied, trying to stay calm but feeling exposed that she knew me that much. I often never wanted to be an open book to anyone, so this was a scary territory my wife was entering with me. I shrugged, trying to come off as nonchalant. “Well, it’s nothing. I’m just happy to have you in my life.”

“Oh my God! Does the sight of me scare you because it is fear in your eyes when you zone out?”

“Oh, no, no. That’s not what I am saying.”

“That’s literally what you meant.”

“I am just so happy to have you in my life that the thought of losing you scares me.”

“Well, that doesn’t make it any better. How often have you been thinking of losing me recently?”

“Come on, stop scrutinizing me so much! I told you I don’t like it when you do that.”

She grimaced and put her hands up.

“Okay, okay,” She said. “Don’t get angry. I was just messing with you. You have gone back to your short temper of late; that is why I am concerned.”

I sighed as I joined her in bed, resting over the shiny maroon duvets as she sank in between them.

“This failure. I…I just can’t understand it.”

She put a hand on my hand and leaned in and kissed me on my cheeks, her eyes tender and full of empathy, wide and peering right into my soul. They were beautiful eyes that lit even the darkest pits of my inner self.

“I am sorry things didn’t go the way you had hoped. Come here.” She called, holding her hands out and inviting me to lie on her bosom, which was heaving up and down gently, her nipples poking through her satin pink night gown.

I crawled up to her and lay on the cushion of her soft breasts, where for a while, I found some peace. I lay there in silence, as she rubbed her hands gently up and down my stomach. I, on the other hand, closed my eyes and listened to her gentle heartbeat, which with each beat, lulled me into some semblance of peace.

“You asked what I was looking at outside the window,” I said, suddenly overtaken by this strong urge to open up. It was strange what a few minutes in her calming embrace did to a man as solid as a rock as I am.

“Mmm-hmm.” She said, leaning forward and kissing me at the back of my ear.

I sighed.

“This is going to sound strange, but it was less a man, more a shadow, something that seems to wear a man’s body.”

Ovelia leaned in and gave me a confused look. I looked at her and nodded.

“It was this eerie shadow that can’t quite stand straight, leaning down toward its left a little, with these unnaturally long arms and this wall of darkness around it. It’s a haunting sight.”

“He has been watching you?” Ovelia asked.

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“For much of my life, honestly.”

“What?” Ovelia asked, leaning once again and giving me a castigating look. “And you never told me? I would kick his ass for you!”

I let out a chuckle, and she laughed after me, kissing me some more behind my ears, on my neck, and my cheek. But I didn’t chuckle because I found what she had said funny, but because I did not want to ruin her mood, because I was genuinely scared. This shadow had been pushed further back into the recesses of my memories ever since I left my father’s home, but had returned with a vengeance over the past few months, coinciding with the spectacular failure of my second book.

I locked my fingers with hers and kissed her hand.

“I know you would protect me,” I said to her. “But I am not scared of what that shadow would do to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am scared of what it wants me to do,” I said.

“Get up, Sweetie,” Ovelia said, helping me up. I sat next to her as she gave me this concerned look. She was rubbing her hands gently up and down my forearms. “Look, I have told you so many times, you don’t need to feel as though you must do this alone. I am here and I want to help you where I can. I love you.”

I smiled and nodded, overwhelmed by emotions but not sure how to express them. I looked at her, deep into her eyes, and I saw warmth, tenderness, love, lust. I leaned in for a kiss. She received my lips, and as our lips touched, I felt the sweet taste of her fruity-scented lip balm. She moaned softly and kissed me back, wrapping her hands around me and turning fully toward me as I put my arms around her back and slowly and delicately made my way up her back, slipping her night gown straps off her shoulder.

I kissed her shoulder, down to her neck, then made my way down to her cleavage, where I buried my face in between her breasts, and as she leaned back on the bed and began to moan, her hands, gripping the back of my head tightly, my hands, almost involuntarily, moved to her neck. At first, it was delicate, and I heard her even moan some more when I placed my hands there.

But then, I started to press harder. Once again, it was within reason, and she responded in kind by continuing to moan and caress me as I made my way back up her face. And the tighter I gripped her neck, the harder I became, and with this feedback loop now established, I gripped her neck tighter and tighter. I became harder and harder. She creased uncomfortably. I tightened my grip on her neck. She choked. I throbbed. She began beating down my forearms. Choking. Gasping. I pushed harder. Excited. Blinded. Bleeding with blind lust. She kicked. Gently at first. Then harder. Then faster. She punched me on my face hard with her elbow. I snapped out of this daze.

“Stop! Stop!” She called in between her gasps.

It took a while for me to stop, because I had been completely lost in these woods of lust. I looked at her. She had on these wide petrified eyes.

“I am sorry, O.V!” I said, pulling back and burying my head between my hands in shame. I hadn’t wanted to stop, but I also never wanted to hurt her. Ovelia cowered on one edge of the bed, frightened and horrified, convulsing terribly, her breathing heavy and laboured.

“Do…do you want to kill me?” She asked in a horror-struck voice, a look of betrayal in her eyes. “I thought you had gotten over this. I do not enjoy it, and we talked about it. I don’t like it when you choke me!”

“No…no, Baby, I don’t want to kill you,” I said, crawling up to her. She cowered some more and pushed my hands away instantly. “I…I just…I don’t know. I…I also thought that I…I am sorry, O.V.”

But I had lied. The strong desire to choke her did not come back – because it never went away. I had found another way to get myself around by watching countless extreme porn videos and violently masturbating to them, or at least using them to get myself aroused enough to get going with her without feeling the need to choke her to get my motor running.

Ovelia got up from the bed, still looking at me suspiciously, and walked to the door, sighed, and then turned back. Now, her look was one of fear.

“Should I be scared?” She asked, “Because you seem to want to take this fantasy of yours to the extreme. And you don’t want to talk about why that is. So, I ask once again, should I be scared, Eliaquim?”

I opened my mouth but could not bring any words out. I didn’t think of myself as a dangerous man. I had quite literally been a good man for most of my life, and I think she saw goodness in me, and that was why she was with me. But I was also aware of the fact that much of what I knew of myself was not complete.

Memories of my life were fragmented, scattered around my brain like confetti, hidden in the shadows like a predator, and I never quite could tell who I was and why I did some things the way I did and what I was capable of. Which was why the sight of that shadow, ever getting closer each time I saw it, frightened me too, because I was not quite sure what it wanted me to do. 

But it was not good because each time I saw it, my skin tingled. My heart began racing in my chest. I got these chest palpitations as my heart beat faster. I started feeling hot with dread. I got this lingering feeling of impending doom quickly taking over every part of my inner self. Chills spread through my body. And I, too, would find myself wondering – Should Ovelia be scared of me?

 

This passage is an excerpt from my upcoming novel titled 'Son of No Man', a tale about a man whose desperate wishes to run away from his past hits a snag a major catastrophic event. What follows, then, is a series of events that lead him down a path unearthing a history of violence, unexplained disappearances, possible murders and truths that he would rather have forgotten.

Let me know if this prologue hooked your attention or if it needs more work. I mean, obviously, it needs more work, as it's just the first draft, lol, but let me know of specific places I could improve on. Did it hook you? Does it give you the desire to read the rest of the book? If not, what about it is off and uninteresting and you would wish changed?