A Desperate Time (Short Fiction)

I SAT ON THE EDGE of my hotel bed, stark naked as panic gripped me, and my heart thudded violently against my chest. My frightful eyes riveted on the naked corpse beside me. Her eyes were wide open towards the ceiling and there was drool all over her mouth.

It was 7:33pm, a very bad time to be stuck in a hotel room with another man's wife who happened to be dead. My head was imploding, scores of thoughts roamed inwardly like vagabonds. The loudest of it indulged me to take to my heels.

But another little one warned me that if I did, I would eventually be caught because I frequented the hotel and some of the hotel workers had come to know me and my car vividly.

They only needed to describe me and my car to the police. Hence, once the description got to the dead woman's family, I would be simply made out as her lover and her killer.

I did not kill her. She was my lover and I cared so much about her. Hence, we often met here, to express our illicit love and lustful desires. Sadly, on this unfortunate day, promiscuity had gone wrong as she had suddenly begun to convulse, simultaneously foaming saliva through the mouth, just while I was only treating her to a cunnilingus. At first, I thought it was orgasm hitting her. Then, I realized it wasn't, I tried to save her, but I didn't know how to. Now, I only had myself to blame.

It'd been nearly one hour now, and I still sat cluelessly, fixated on her motionless body, and lost in my confused thoughts.

Suddenly, someone rapped on the door, sending my heart to an overdrive. I'd expected the knock to come sooner or later though, because I had booked a short time and it was up.

I prayed silently that it was Peter who was at the door. He was the room service boy who had done a few errands for me, like the few times I'd forgot to come along with condoms or aphrodisiac.

My nerves were in bonkers as I turned the key and squeezed the knob of the door to open up. Absentmindedly, still naked, I opened the door slightly. There, Paul was standing.

"Your time's up sir", he said politely, " I'm sorry to..."

"Paul", I truncated his apology, "There's a problem"

"Problem?", he retorted in puzzlement.

Then I moved my shuddering body out of the way and let him in. His eyes instantly found the diminutive naked figure on the bed and then fixated upon it. He didn't flinch 

"She's dead", I said bluntly.

"Epileptic seizure?", he asked and then sauntered closer to her and placed the back of his palm on her naked body.

'Yes", I retorted, "How did you know it was seizure"

"The drool", he replied, pointing a finger around her mouth.

"I don't know what to do?", I said, trying to read his mind through his face, but there was no line or expression there.

"I have to inform the manager", he said.

There, I nearly collapsed or had a stroke. Then, he left the room, seemingly leaving with the air as my lungs struggled for air. It took him less than three minutes to reappear with the manager. The manager's head was bald and huge, seeming like he was carrying the whole world on his shoulders. His name was Silas.

"My God! Who is she and what happened here?" 

Silas probed and simultaneously cursed, endlessly, his curses, seemingly directed at God or the devil, but not me. He had come to know me as a good client of the hotel, and we had even watched a few Champions' League games together downstairs at the lounge and he had always had rapport with his clients. A few times he would even throw some free bottles of beer on the house if the team he supported won a match.

I began to explain how she'd died. Strangely, he understood. He believed I couldn't have killed her intentionally. Before her, I had brought a significant number of other lovers to the hotel.

"Was she a drug user?"

"No, she is not', I said, "she is the religious type" 

He threw me an incredulous look. Then I said, "...but the libidinous type. Her name was Lillian. She is my neighbour's wife and a mother of three" I continued,

"The police will make a meal of this..."

"Police?" the manager retorted in derision, then he began to pace about the place, nodding his head simultaneously and apparently sifting through some things mentally. I was lost in both suspense and puzzlement.

"We shouldn't involve the police. They are bad for our business and to you. They will make a meal of this as you have rightly said, making it seem a premeditated murder. They will exploit this situation and even extort us of money and time. You didn't kill her, these things happen, you shouldn't suffer, likewise, our business shouldn't. This is the kind of news that makes bold headlines on the PM news and on the social media. Imagine the caption, "MAN SEXUALLY KILLS NEIGHBOUR'S WIFE IN A HOTEL"

"So..?. What are you suggesting?" My heart shuttled between my chest and my throat, almost clogging it.

"We are going to quietly remove this corpse from here and then find a place to ditch it"

"Are you insane?!" I fired with mixed emotions of fright and rage. How could you suggest such. She is a human being for God's sake not a garbage!" 

He nodded and looked at me pitifully, shrugging in a feigned resignation perhaps.

"Let's go get the police then"

My legs began to shudder more, nervously, on the floor, like they could no longer support me vertically, and like I was finally having the stroke.

"Give me a moment, please?" I said, gently pulling him back by his arm as he tried to head for the door. I paced for a moment around the room against the odds of suffering the stroke.

Options considered, I exhaled deeply and then nodded, "Let's do it"

I had considered my family. My wife was the choir mistress in our church, and I am an usher. I would be saving everyone from humiliation and shame, and perhaps prison time for me. 

Less than ten minutes later, after dressing up her corpse in her clothes, we had wrapped her in a bed sheet, ready to remove her from the hotel. Paul and I did that, and then, we waited for a signal from the manager. Then it came. He switched off power to the entire building to keep lodgers in their rooms. Then, Paul swiftly hauled the corpse on his shoulder and hurried out of the room. I scurried after him through the darkness and down the stairs. He knew his way blindly. In a minute, we were putting the corpse into the trunk of my car in the lot of the hotel.

Then in another moment, the hotel light came back on. I looked around, no one was in sight to have witnessed this.

Paul would be riding with me in the car. The manager surfaced in the lot. He advised us where to take and ditch the body. Paul got into the car after me, the manager helped again by opening the gate. He had already sent the security man on an errand. I drove out of the hotel.

I drove for a few minutes and then steered into the expressway. It was all jungle on the sides with curtains of tall grasses. I stopped the car once we had found a perfect place to pull over. We got out of the car, and then our eyes scanned the entire expanse. Realizing it was what it was, a jungle, I opened my trunk, then Paul and I lifted Lillian out. She was heavier than a drenched carpet. 

He retrieved the bed sheet from her dead body. It had the emblazonment of the hotel, and we couldn't risk leaving a clue traceable back to the hotel behind.

Paul folded the sheet back into the trunk. I realized that one of Lillian's shoes had removed while we were moving her out of the trunk. I was going to get it, but then, for a moment, Lillian's helpless figure gripped me to the spot, her eyes were still wide open, pulling my heartstrings. Then, I knelt beside her and shut her eyes gently forever. My heart was totally in pieces. 

"I'm so sorry", I said inwardly as tears trickled down from my eyes.

Paul nudged me out of my self-condemnation, "Let's move her deeper into the bush", he'd said.

He was the only one thinking with his head and not his heart. We moved her deeper, dumping her unlike the trash she was. Then later, we got back into my car and drove off in a trice.

I dropped Paul back at the hotel with the bed sheet and then continued home.

I drove into my compound, parked the car and got out. Suddenly Henrietta, Lilian's eight years old daughter appeared on their balcony, directly beside mine, to see if it was her mother that had been taxied home.

I could see her disappointment. She waved at me, and I reciprocated. Then, she disappeared swiftly into the house.

I looked up to the sky. The moon looked exactly like Lillian's dead face, lifeless. I became uncontrollably emotional again as tears trickled down from my eyes. I quickly wiped it. I sighed deeply, and then walked to my apartment. 

My wife, Teresa was watching a Don Moen's concert on God channel. My five years old twin-daughters, Harmony and Melody had already gone to bed. I continued my acting as a good and loving husband by kissing Tess on her cheek. Then, she was beginning to grouse about my lateness, but I was having none of it as I immediately zapped off into my daughters' room. 

They slept peacefully. I made a promise to them quietly that after tonight I would change for good. Then, I laid soft kisses on their cheeks.

I wouldn't sleep tonight, I couldn't. The whole tragedy replayed in my head. I feared it had been programmed to play for a life time. Now, it was 10:12pm. 

Unfortunately for me, in the other flat, I had no inkling that Lillian's husband had been calling her cell phone. I also didn't have the inkling that he had taken a walk down the stairs in the yard, and he had heard his wife's phone ringing in my car while I laid on my bed. I had also forgotten that one of Lillian's shoes was still in my trunk.

The next call he would make would be to his brother-in-law who was a police inspector.