ON THE FIRST DAY OF NOVEMBER

TW: abuse, suicide, murder

Collins had changed. He no longer came home for dinner, neither did he sacrifice a minute for breakfast. He would rush out to work without saying the usual

"Good morning honey," with a light, sweet, and tangible tone.

His subtily calm voice had morphed into an abode of quick aggression.

He no longer prayed or played with me at night, nor in the morning. He became private, easily irritated, and dumb towards my words.

All these negative metamorphosis started after I had my second miscarriage, on the first of October, the day my country celebrated her independence.

I suspected that he had began to see another, and I tried to imagine her, the woman who made my husband change. I carved out her voluptuous, round hips with my eyes. I painted her honey-complexion in my mind. I always listened for her seductive voice, when my husband made a call.

But I stopped. I stopped my unhelpful suspicion the day I asked him,

" Is there another?."

That morning Collins was stirring the tea which he had made for himself.

" And what's that supposed to mean?," he asked, but in a manner that showed his question was a warning. His voice was unusually aggressive. It surprised me how his once timid voice could become so frightening, so unforgiving. I didn't succumb, but persisted, and asked,

" Who is the woman you are keeping outside?."

He paused for a while and then spilled the hot cup of tea on my chest. I screamed in pain. A pain that didn't come from the hot cup of tea which blazed my chest. It was a pain that came from the epiphany, that my husband could ever hurt me physically.

I cried throughout that night, and the night after, and subsequent nights that I couldn't remember.

The second time Collins hit me was two week after the miscarriage. He caught me searching his phone for details that implied his infidelity. He gave me resonating slaps and punches, the subsequent slaps and blows, more painful than the previous. 

" Girl you better report to the authorities," my friend Ije said to me, her voice concerned.

I always informed her. I told her everyday of my husband's yahoo nature.

" You know I can't. He will change," I said authoritatively not wanting to believe otherwise.

" When will he change?. After he had succeeded in killing you," Ije had asked, before I hung up in anger.

 I never called the authorities. I didn't, I couldn't. I still loved Collins. I had a silent but powerful wish for him to change. I wanted the old Collins whom I had known for five years to come back. I wanted everything to go back to the way they were. I hated this negative transformation. It made my skin an unfit vessel for my soul.

The third time Collins hit me, was the three weeks after my miscarriage. I caught him with her. The woman who had changed him. It was the day I had gone shopping with Ije.

" Girl, isn't that your husband?," Ije asked, her tone certain.

" No he isn't the one," I replied, but my eyes disagreed with my words.

 The figure resembled his, and it scared me that it did. The figure was tall, and dark in complexion, with firm, broad shoulders.

I ran out of Ije's car. It was then I saw her.

The woman who had changed my husband. She wasn't like anything I had imagined. She was a tall woman of confident eyes, and enticing, generous lips. She had not my voluptuous hips, nor my proud air. She was of a dark complexion, her face round, and her nose almost flat.

" Hon, who is these?," she had asked Collins in a puzzled tone, as though she were his wife, and I was the intruder. She sized me, from head to toe, in a manner that made me feel smaller, and smaller at the pass of every second.

" Slut!," I said, and slapped her. She screamed and began to cry like a child, but I persevered. I caught her wig, and pulled as hard as I could. For a moment, I imagined her wig as the charm she had placed on my husband. So I wanted to pull it off, and keep it to myself until I had the chance to burn it.

Collins stopped me. He dragged me into his black, flashy Camry. He drove off, just after he said to the lady,

" Am sorry hon. I will call you. I promise."

I couldn't believe that he could fall for a girl with wigs, and a girl who was in no way attractive than I. Perhaps she was pregnant, and he was sure she wouldn't have a miscarriage.

He drove off, his eyes too fixated on the road. I could perceive his glaring anger, the way his shoulder heaved up and down, but I wasn't scared. I wasn't scared until he began to hit me continuously. Then I became scared of death. That night, I nearly died when he broke one of our dinning chairs on my back. I was bedridden for about a week. He didn't let me go to the hospital. He wanted no one to know of his deeds. He seized my phone, and bought me medicine. He would force me to take sleeping pills when he was about to go to work. He would then lock me inside the house

I felt lonely. I felt caged like a loyal animal caged by his animous owner. I feIt stupid, and miserable. It was during this period I made a decision to leave. I wanted out of this marriage.

So the fourth week after the miscarriage, I said to him

" I am leaving. Am done with this marriage,"

He flapped the newspaper which he was reading and then chuckled. 

He hit me, severally. His punches made me bleed, and his stretched kicks made me gasp for air. My face had now become swollen beyond recognition. I wanted to leave, but he caged me whenever he left for work, and always locked me in the guest room at night, before he slept.

On the first day of November, exactly a month after my miscarriage, I killed Collins, and his lover.

That day they had returned from wherever they had went to. 

She swayed her waist, like a proud peahen as her and my husband came into the guest room. He chased me out. I could sense they were both drunk, and they mocked me. The sounds of their activity echoed from the room, and it reached my ears. It made my heart sink, and it also released something that had been tied for the past, one month. The pains of losing two children to a miscarriage had resurfaced that night.

I rushed to Collins' room, and grabbed his small gun. My tool for redemption. I felt nothing when I shot the woman. Her moaning stopped, and she fell on Collins. His eyes now welcomed a seep of horrific fear.

" Please Kamsi, please, don't do this," he begged. I listened, and made sure my brain stored those last words. The pleading "please" and the desperate "Kamsi", my brain stored it all.

A deafening gunshot preceded my husband's low moan and then I joined them. I followed them to wherever monsters went, after death.