A burning heart. 1
Good evening my lovers. My previous story I started is still undergoing some major editing surgery. So, permit to start another one which I promise I would complete. This new story will actually be in series and I promise i would be posting new updates every day( cross my heart.Lol)
Please I want you all to know that none of the events or names in this story are real. Just my creativity in action. So, read and enjoy.
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Episode 1.
"If you don't do what I ask you to do, I would kill your parents and there wouldn't be anyone to protect you again." Ehi's cousin, victor threatened. He started raining all sorts of threats on her. Despite her sturbborness as an 18year old, ehi was really scared of threats especially when it was coming from a 25 year old guy. By the way, she have heard countless rumors of his notoriety in town, her cousin victor was really a vicious thug.
She was so scared of victor that there were times she had nightmares as a result of so much fear in her head and by the time she wakes up in the morning and sees that her family are alright, she breathes a sigh of relief.
On the other hand, ehi's mother was trying to mend the relationship between herself and her daughter bit by bit. She was now getting closer and and trying to discuss about women matters with her daughter. But sadly, a relationship that was very fragile for many years cannot just blossom overnight. Sometimes her mother sees her as a difficult child, a child that doesn't want anything to do with her mother. But honestly, that wasn't the case. Ehi's mom was never there for her in her formative years when a mother should build a very strong bond with her daughter. She was always almost unavailable. Always busy with business.... ..
Then, ehi's life began to turn upside down.
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Ehi's father had a very close friend, who is also a friend to the family. His name was Doctor Ben, but they all refer to him simply as doctor. Ehi later found out that he was not actually a medical doctor, but he had a PhD, and thats the reason why he was called doctor. He was always a regular visitor to their house ,especially when ehi's dad was at home.
One day,he came to the house when ehi's mother was not at home. She went to the hospital along with the driver for her regular medical checkup. Ehi's father had also traveled for a business trip. Dr Ben met only ehi at home and at that time they didn't have a housemaid.
Ehi welcomed him to her home with a smile as usual. They both sat on a sofa in the living room and he started telling her stories about things she never knew. After a short while, his hands moved upwards and he started caressing her shoulders. Ehi's was shocked and dumbfounded when he tried to touch her bossom. She made a desperate effort to jump up, but before she could, he held her firmly and pushed her. She fell with her back on the sofa.
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Ehi couldn't believe what had just happen to her. She had heard stories about girls who passed through such horrifying experience, but never in her wildest dream had she ever imagined that this would be her fate one day. Her brain had frozen, and she was unaware of her environment for some time.
Dr. Ben stood over her with a wolfish smile across his face. He then threw a bundle of cash on her as she laid down on the bare floor crying uncontrollably with her eyes closed. He told her to use the money to buy whatever she needed. He further warned her to keep her mouth shut about what had just happened. He threatened that if he ever finds out that she had told anybody about it, he would kill her.
This was the second time she had been molested by a person her parents trusted. First her cousin victor, and now Dr. Ben.
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Ehi was feeling like hell for the next couple of days. Suicidal thoughts completely took over her thinking faculty. Her mother definitely knew that something was wrong with her daughter. Every now and then, she would ask her what was the matter with her. Ehi would always scream at her and her mother would scream back . Her mother would say she had been possessed by a demon and called her awful names . Her mother even threatened to throw her into a river or give her away to some spiritualist to cure her of her "madness".
Ehi became very insolent, violent and disrespectful towards her mother.she would always think that all what had happened to her was largely her mother's fault.
One day, ehi's mother called a pastor to the house in order to pray for her daughter and save her from the unclean spirits that have been making her exhibit such barbaric behaviors recently and deliver her from whatever "demon" had a hold on her.
Ehi would always say to her that there's nothing wrong with her but she never believed her. Ehi would always cry in her heart . "Couldn't she see that my problem is nothing near spiritual?Couldn't she see that I am broken inside? Can't she see that all I needed from the beginning was her love, care and support?" Sometimes, ehi would wonder about the kind of mother he had, how skewed her reasoning is. How could a mother be so insentive towards the feelings of her own daughter? She even wondered wether she was actually the woman who gave birth to her.
Ehi's mother had a friend popularly called mummy Helen . This was because her only daughter was named Helen. Mummy helen would tell ehi's mother not to be too bothered about the attitude of her daughter. She would always claim that was how teenagers behave. According to her, sometimes, they take themselves for adults and might exhibit some strange behaviors at some point.
If only they knew what ehi had passed through, how she had been damaged emotionally......They kept talking about her in her presence, deliberately ignoring her as if she wasn't thee listening, as if she didn't matter.
Their conversation was really amusing and ridiculous. The woman was busy vomiting various theories about what could be the matter with ehi. Ehi's mother was just swallowing everything hook, line and sinker. Talk about mothers who always listen to outsiders but never had time for their kids. Ehi was quite convinced that her mom would go ahead and carryout all what she had been adviced to do. But ehi was also ready for them and vowed that she wouldn't be forced to do anything or go anywhere she didnt want to.. She knew she was not possessed by any demon and would never allow her mother drag her to any spiritualist for "help".
To be continued ***********
Thanks for reading. A very big thanks to all my sponsors , up voters and subscribers. You all are the best. ☺☺☺
Special thanks to @jasglaybam @Olasquare @fredolo @Princessbusayo @LeticiaFelize @Talecharm @HappyBoy
A blue moon...
Hello everyone . hope you all are sailing smoothly in this beautiful december. I have had a short story in mind that I have been developing for almost three months. Feel free to tell let me know what you think about it.
Ephriam works at a bar around his neighborhood. He was a secondary school leaver, and getting a job with that level of education is as difficult as a camel passing through the eye of a needle.
He had been desperately in need of a job as his father was a low income earner who worked as a factory laborer. There have been a gross mismanagement of the company's resources by the new administration which had really affected the company's productivity. Alot of workers who were owed salaries were retrenched without prior notice. Ephriam's father although, not among the retrenched staff, have not been paid for almost four months now.
Things were very bad at home as the family were finding it difficult to feed. Ephriam knew that he had come of age, and as a young man, he had to do what he had to do to support his father. Infact, ephriam has always been a very industrious boy from a tender age. After school hours, he engages in selling sachet water popularly known as " pure water" to older boys who play football at a nearby field. He does this on weekdays from 4pm to 6pm. From the proceeds of this little business, he was able to buy some text books, a new pair of sandals and also replaced his old and worn out uniform. His mother had always been very proud of him.
Ephraim's mother was also a petty trader but had been rendered redundant for a while due to a protracted illness. Her legs are always painful. His sister, joy, was in her final class in high school.
Ephraim's family were virtually living from " hand to mouth", but they were all upright people. They never begged nor steal no matter how hard their situation was. They were always hopeful.
Apart from poverty, a major comfrontation Ephraim faced was his ailing mother. Her ailment seemed to defy all remedy. The hospital had diagnosed her with osteoarthritis. Ephraim's father had been spending a lot of money over the years on her treatment, but there seem to be no remarkable improvement.
Ephraim's mom was the first to kick against the continual "wasting" of money on her health. She persuaded her husband to instead spend his money on other productive ventures like investing it in their children's tertiary Education. " As things are right now, we could barely feed", so why bother pouring water into a basket ", she would say to her husband. These words really made Ephraim's father sad and moved him to tears sometimes.
Ephriam too was also heartbroken whenever he sees his mother moving in pains and in great difficulties. Sometimes she falls down repeatedly but she never allows anyone to come to her aid as she was determined never to be a burden to her family.. She prefers to pick herself up each time she falls.
Seeing the woman who gave him life, who gave him everything suffer so much without being able to help her make ephriam wept at nights. But all these serve as nothing short of a motivation to continually work hard ever since he was 17 years old. He had always known that his family was very poor and it woyld be unwise of him, waiting for a miracle to happen .
On his way home, he stopped at the roadside market to get some food items. He had just being paid at the local bar where he worked. He always did this at the end of every month when he receives his salary which was only a paltry sum. But he does this with a lot of joy in his heart and with a smiley face, knowing that his family won't go hungry for sometime.
As he arrived home, he saw a large gathering at their house. A woman amongst The crowd spotted him from a distance and began to wail in a very disturbing and heart wrenching manner. . This was very strange to Ephraim as they almost always never had any visitors since they were poor and nobody cared. So, the large number of people he saw at home immediately told him that something had happened, something had.
When his sister,joy saw him, she ran to him and held him in a tight embrace and sobbed profusely. He couldn't bear this any more, and he pulled her away from him. He asked her immediately, " joy what is the matter? Why are all these people here? Where is Mum and dad?Amidst tears, joy told him that their father had been killed by a moving vehicle, he died at the spot.
He couldn't believe what he had just heard, the shopping bag he had come home with immediately fell from his hands. He became light headed and almost collapsed, but he was held firm by the people surrounding him.
Inside the room, Ephraim's mother was sitting on the bare floor, crying uncontrollably. She was surrounded by a small group of women who were desperately trying to console her. It broke Ephraim's heart to pieces seeing his mom crying bitterly about the loss of her husband despite all the pains she had been passing through.
Ephriam wondered whether his family will ever recover from this great loss. He wondered whether things will ever change for the better. He wondered whether his family will ever smile again......
This is the end of the first episode of the story. Your comments and observing would be highly welcomed. U promise to post the second update tomorrow as soon as I can. Thank y'all so much for taking your time to check it out.
I want to really thank and appreciate you all. My first sponsors: @jasglaybam @freedolo. God bless you!
And to my upvoters: @Princessbusayo @Olasquare @HappyBoy
@LeticiaFelize @FarmGirl @Talecharm @Glory_et_Grace @Kristofferquincy @Maryjacy @Pearlkel @King_Gozie @Kiingsley God bless you all too!!
The menace of Drug abuse among young girls.
Hello sweeties.. I want to begin by wishing y'all a happy new month. May December bring you many reasons to celebrate life! Let it be filled with joy, happiness, kindness,love and good cheer.
This will be my second article as a new member. To all my sponsors, up voters, commenters,viewers, I appreciate you all.
@HappyBoy, @jasglaybam, @Princessbusayo.
@Olasquare @George_Dee, @FarmGirl.
@LeticiaFelize, @Talecharm@Pearlkel.
@king_Gozie, @Glory_et_Grace, @Kristofferquincy,
@Maryjacy, @ probinsyana. You all are a big inspiration and I love you all
So, yesterday night,I **was** *in* **bed** listening to my favorite radio progam while waiting for my beautiful sleep, when they broke the news of a 17 year old girl who killed her father the previous day.
To say I was shocked was an understatement, I was literally dumbfounded and astonished that I held my breath for several seconds. This was the most shocking and heartbreaking news I have ever heard since the beginning of the year.
According to the *report*,the girl's father came to her room without knocking on the door.As soon as he opened the door, he saw his daughter inhaling some substances. On taking a closer look, he found out they were hard drugs.
Maybe if it were another father, he might have had a cardiac arrest and slip into unconsciousness on beholding his lovely daughter in such an act. Some fathers might just burst into tears. But none of these were the case here. This particular father actually overcame his shock immediately and was overwhelmed by a terrible rage. He started beating his daughter mercilessly .
Strangely, this young child didn't react or try to save herself from her father's strikes and pounding. Instead she kept looking at her father with angry and blazing eyes. Her father suddenly picked up the the bottle containing the drug substance and smashed it against the wall.
Then thunder struck, on seeing what her father just did, as if possessed by a malicious spirit, the girl charged at her father like an irate bull, knocking him off balance. As soon as she was on top of him, she picked up a piece of iron that serve to hold door in position during a wind .With this, she delt her father a terrible blow on the head. Even when he was obviously dead,, she continued to strike him with the rod and blood kept pouring out of his head.
Now, when I was in high school, my psychology teacher once said that when you take away the drug from an addict who is in the act, then whatever happens to you, blame yourself. An addict is always ready to do anything or go to any length in order to get his dope. Such a person have already lost the sense of right and wrong, good and evil. Such a person doesn't care about anyone or anything anymore, not even a father, mother, brother or sister. According to that person's thinking, the most important thing that has ever happened to him is the substance of abuse. So, the young girl who killed her father was no longer her father's daughter the day she startred using these drugs. She was no longer the girl her father used to know. She literally transformed into a monster.
When the young girl was arrested, she confessed amidst bitter tears that it was her boyfriend that introduced her to hard drugs. According to her, she was walking home from school one day, when this young man approached her, he started telling her things that made her head spin. As a naive young girl, she fell in love with him, thinking he was also in love with her, not knowing that he was soon going to put her life in jeopardy. They started a brief relationship, and it was during one of their meetings that he introduced her to drugs, and the rest they say is history....
Its very depressing that a lot of young men use hard drugs to lure unsuspecting and innocent young girls. They know that once she's hooked, then she will always crave for it and would be willing to do whatever she's asked to do just to get her shot.
I have heard a real life story of a boy who waylaid a girl in a lonely alley. He didn't rape her as people would think. lnstead he held her down and forcefully injected her with some dangerous substances and left her there. His mission was now successful. The following week, she came to look for him at his apartment, begging him for another shot as the substance have already taken over her system and she apparently couldn't live without it. That was how she became completely at his mercy, to be defiled anyhow and anytime he wanted. This was a girl, who before the unfortunate incident, was the best student in mathematics at her school but later became a hopeless addict and a degenerate.
All this are part of the reasons why I am strongly of the opinion that teenage girls shouldn't be walking home alone. They should always be in the company of a brother, a guardian or atleast, they should be walking in groups of three to five girls in order to reduce the chances of them falling into evil.
Just recently, I was watching a documentary about drug abuse among youths. I was really shocked when it was said that the population of young women abusing drugs in my country is almost double the population of the men. It was really hard for me to believe this. As a matter of fact, when I was a teenager, I had always thought that it was only the male that smoke or abuse drugs. Right now, i am quite sure that this is the general belief among alot of young girls in my society including the ones who later fell into it. They were lured into drugs by their unscrupulous boyfriends at a young age as a result of ignorance and not curiosity which is the major cause of drug abuse among boys
She would lie to her parents that she is going for tutorials, bible fellowship,islamic school or a birthday party of a friend, only to end up at her dealer's room.
This goes on for sometime, until when the boy is now tired of her. By this time, she is no longer looking as attractive as she was before. Her eyes is now always red, her nose is always messy, her mouth is always smelly. Her her skin is always rough and her hair is always unkempt. The drug have already begin to take a toll on her body and she's now looking much more older.
She begins to disgust him. Anytime she comes for a dose, he beats her up and even inflict serous injury on her body. But she wouldn't stop coming because she can't do without her shot. He then finally kicks her out. Now, she has no where else to go as her parents have already disowned her for bringing disgrace to the family when they discovered she was Junkie
She has no option than to become a child of the world. She might end up becoming the only female in a robbery gang. She might later find other young addicts like her self on the streets, where she would be willing to sell her body for less than three dollars just to have enough to buy her regular dose. She might end up with one or two fatherless babies as a result of such precarious lifestyle. Some of them who are homeless die off during the cold season since they have no clothes or shelter, just like the way some animals die off due to starvation or some other harsh conditions.
Personally, I fear Drug abuse more than any other thing in this world. I have seen a lot of young women who are prettier than I am , who are more educated and smarter thani am , more popular and even richer than me but later succumb into the abyss of drugs and substance abuse, thereby making their life miserable . whenever i see the " before and after " photos of girls who are junkies (some of them late) ,I feel so horrified that I am unable to look at them a second time.
The rate at which the menance is spreading among young women in my society is really alarming and all hands should be on deck in order to arrest this unfortunate development. Parents especially mothers should constantly talk to their daughter not as little girls but as their friends. They should tell them about every thing they need to know about drug abuse and how to protect and prevent themselves from falling into the pits of its addiction.
There is also need to build more rehabilitation centers, creation of awareness of this menance by religious leaders, school teachers, state agencies and influencers, in oder to bring drug abuse among youths to a halt or atleast to the bearest minimum.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read.
Hello Lovelies...
Hello everyone. I go by the name NanaAziz. I joined read.cash 3 days ago, feel so excited and elated to be part of this beautiful network. Nice meeting you all.
I am exactly mid-20 and thankful to God, I love reading and writing. I have this big secret which I have never told anyone before-I LOVE ATTENTION, but its quite weird since I am the quiet and gentle type. You would never know, Lol.
I was born in the northern part of Nigeria, the first child in a family of 5 children. Dad works with the government at the ministry of information and mom works as a nurse in a public hospital . Mum had always wanted me to be a nurse because she believes I had the brains to succeed in medicine, but I never wanted anything to do with blood. I remember when i was 16, mum showed me a video of a pregnant woman in the labor room trying to push the baby out, the moment i saw the baby's head come out with blood all over, i passed out! Lol. So, I followed dad's footsteps and I'm working on being a journalist and a writer.
I was really close to my dad than my mum when growing up, and even up till this day . Although I look so much like mum facially, i took after dad's intelligence,mannerism and mentality. Just like dad, I am a very simple but ambitious person, have few desires,and not the "TGIF" girl, Lol. On Friday evenings and on weekend, I just wanna be alone in my room and let my mind wander about the past, present and future. By the way i am an eccentric futurist and a post modernist (whatever that means. Lol).
Most times, i and dad watch the international news and interesting documentaries that expand my horizon as we discuss issues in the news. We have been doing this together since I was 12 years old. And sometimes, mom gets jealous. Lol. But she have already arrived at the inevitable conclusion that i was more than a daddy's girl, i am daddy's best friend .Every now and then, when she sees me and daddy in such deep conversation, she interrupts by screaming at me to leave her husband alone for her, that i am now old enough to have my own husband. I and dad always laugh at this and tease her the more.
I remember when I was much more younger, whenever dad came home in the evening, I was always the first to run up to him, after greeting him, the next thing was to collect the daily newspapers he always come home with from the office.I would read the whole four newspapers every evening as i eat the chocolates, biscuits, ice cream or any other edibles that dad brought home for his kids. Sometimes, i even forget about school assignments. My favorite section was always the fiction and short stories section. I have always found these stories interesting and also wished to write good stories too when I eventually become an adult .
As a very simple girl, most people who see me would think I don't have big dreams. They tend to see me as" every other girl", who only wants to end up with an average guy and pop out many kids as possible because this is very common in northern Nigeria. But in the depths of my soul, I have this great will to do or become something big one day. Something that would put me in the spotlight and make dad proud. Sometimes I think and talk about stuffs that "only a man" should think about, this is quite scary to me but I just can't stop myself from thinking along those lines. Maybe this is due to the the fact that i have been very close to dad who is also very ambitious and over the years, he has been telling me things that a father would only tell his son. Although I have two brothers, but my father have said several times that I should have been a boy, Lol. This is because he thinks i understand him better than anyone else, including my mother. I want my family to be mighty proud of me one day.
I want to sincerely thank you for taking your time in reading my introductory article and getting to know me. I also looking forward to getting to know you too and becoming a good friend of yours. ☺☺☺
Cheers!
@NanaAziz95