21 The Suspec (2/2)

Then the ripping of wrapper from body, the fierce pounding

of flesh.

Sounds of pain, of fury, of madness, mingling together, and shattering into an exclamation of single climax!

Shards of snifflings and pantings litter the page . . .

It was the bark of the gunshot that completed my resurrection: BLAHM! – and I was up from the grave and at the typewriter, beating out words blindly (I knew the keys on her like a man knows all the corners on his lover's body, even in the dark.) I beat her for hours, while she spewed pages and pages and pages . . .

Behind the page-wall on my right lay silence – no words, no sounds. Only the sound of my pummelling filled the air, and the scream of the words being beaten out of the machine – the short story that just happened.

* * *

In the afternoon, the police came.

There were two corpses: the old man's on my left, and the madwoman's on the right. Flanked by deaths like that, the policemen had no option but to take me. They couldn't go back empty-handed.

They did not believe the short story when I wrote it as my statement.

'Wetin be dis? You dey write story,' the sergeant said. I recognized the voice – it did not have the 'Baby how far' hoa.r.s.eness; it was the 'Patience! You dey mad?' fierceness.

There was nothing for them to hold on to. They held me in a cell. It was my room; small and black. A child's coffin. A place to continue my dying in.

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