Tick Tock
Tick Tock...
It's 6:30am in the morning, but you are wide awake.
You should be fast asleep like every other sleep-deprived worker would proudly be on such a rainy Saturday morning, but the adrenaline flowing through your veins has wiped away sleep's last vestiges from your eyes.
Besides, if the sizable groans and moans in the other room were any indication, Gabriel and Masiri were at it again.
But that knowledge no longer clouds your eyes with residues of an old pain. It no longer fills your mouth with the bitter taste of betrayal.
Today was finally here.
The day of reckoning had finally arrived.
You close your eyes and force yourself to tune out their voices, and instead, open your mind up to the imminent journey of the next 12 hours.
At exactly 7am, you will finally get off the bed and prepare for work.
You will be in the kitchen preparing breakfast when Gabriel will waltz in like he always does every morning and give that nostalgic smile filled with pathetic remorse that you've hated for what seems like forever now.
He will hide his face and ask if you had a nice night and if you needed anything... like as though you both hadn't spent the last 4 years of your marriage waking up to loud laughs, playful teasings and kisses that always lit up your day. Like as though he hadn't thrown all that away for mad, emotionless sex every night with the village trollop that Maami had brought into your own home.
You will simply return that fake smile, say you are fine, and ask if he needed you to make another plate for him. And Gabriel, being the astute fool you'd once loved more than anything, will sigh in relief and say yes.
And after that, you will go to the workplace you share with your husband and live through the horror that is "Office Gossip".
They will not speak to you outright because you are the CEO. However, behind your back, they will whisper in corners and crossroads.
They will wonder why the owner of a Production company could not just sack her buffoon of a husband and even divorce him. Behind their closed lips, they will label you weak because you let your Mother-In-Law wander into your home and dump a village wife on your husband all because you had not yet been delivered of any child after 5 years of marriage.
They will not understand that you cannot leave because, in the first year of your marriage, you'd foolishly signed away half your rights of ownership of the Company to Gabriel and now you must fight to get it back.
They will never understand, and so you will simply smile that wide, faint smile once again.
During lunchtime, you will have takeaway deliveries with Obumneke in her office as usual, where you both will laugh and gist about Instagram blogs, Lagos life or her latest boyfriend.
And even though she doesn't mean to hurt you even more; even though you've told her to stop pitying you, Obumneke will not help it. She too will flash you that concerned, confused eye that everyone else in the office shares when they think you aren't looking.
The eye that spoke more loudly than words that said, "why are you still with him?".
But, once again, that secret, inner fake smile will appear.
And when the time finally comes at last by 7pm that day; when you are sure Gabriel should be on his way home with his pregnant Masiri after the Lagos traffic, you will drop the Divorce papers on the dinning table.
As you drop them, your fingers will glide over the other papers on your hands, the ones that state Gabriel's transference of all his stocks in the company back to you; the ones that transferred the millions he'd embezzled in foreign accounts back to you.
As your fingers glide over them, you will feel a sudden hesitation.
The years spent loving Gabriel will come to you again...those moments spent in bliss and happiness wIll come rushing back to you.
But then, suddenly in your mind's eye, you will see him and Masiri's future perfect family in your head. You will picture it so vividly that it will block all other thoughts.
Few seconds later, the door will burst wide open. Gabriel and his wench will stand at the doorway wide eyed , looking at you warily and anxiously.
With the last smile you can summon, you will greet them primly, set the rest of the signed documents primly on the table, slide off your wedding ring, and walk past their astonished faces out the door.
. . . . . .
Suddenly, a loud ringing noise appears from nowhere.
"Heiss! Oya, make una wake up o! It's 7am already. Let's get ready to get to work on the bush today. Oya! Stand up!".
The noise moves from one end to the other and you realize it's a whistle being blown.
As you slowly rub your eyes to push away the remnants of sleep still in you, you look around in confusion.
"Wetin dey worry you, you this Igbo winsh?. This one wey you dey look like this...shey you sleep go heaven?", Barakat, one of your cellmates says.
And, then, like a train wreck, it all comes rushing to you.
Gabriel, Masiri, Mama, his betrayal, everything.
Then...the wishful transference of ownership and assets that night.
And then, you realize something else.
It had been a dream. A fruitless dream.
You look around your prison cell once again for a very long moment.
Then finally, you smile.
A real smile