Gradually, the times when it used to be fun to be awake, when it was like punishment to be made to sleep, when all you wanted was to be with your mattress from school and share times of excitement; those times were fading from memory. Fast. Becoming nothing but a pale, distant recollection.
How long ago was it when she'd begged to be allowed to visit her school friend on the pretext of having to do a take-home assignment together? All in a bid to be away from home and to be in the company of friends outside the house? Or the other time that she was caught trying to leave the house quietly by the back door and was flogged? She remembered how she'd thought her family evil for being so mean and the thoughts of running away from home that occurred to her at that time.
Oh, but what will she give to be in the warm embrace of that very same family now? How she'd want for nothing more but to stay indoors for as long as is humanly possible right from this very moment. What a welcome relief it will be if someone, anyone will punish her by keeping her at home now. She'd give up everything for that singular comfort. Anything. No price was too dear for that now. But from whence will that come? She'd had fantasies of being whisked away home by some force beyond description in the early days but even those comforting idyllic surrealisms had been extinguished by the passage of time and the dawning of the realistic eventuality of her plight.
In the ramshackly matchbox of a house where she'd woken up recently, the conditions were not as decrepit as it was in those early days when she'd had nothing to ward off the elements of hot sweaty days and cold uncomfortable nights. As unthinkable as it may seem, she was grateful for little favours like the roof that kept some of the heat, a sizeable volume of the rare rainfall, and that remained warmer than the terrible outdoors at night of those early days.
As she say down on the floor, she winced at the pain that shot through her back like a bolt from the pits of hell. She muffled a scream that struggle to gain freedom from her and bit down hard on her lips that it drew blood. But that was a lot more bearable than what consequences she'd have had to endure had the scream successfully come out. She remembered in crystal terms the cruel torture that had greeted her when she wailed in pain as her body can in contact with a hot kettle. The burn from the kettle and effects of the torture her cry caused were still too fresh to merit more.
The blood from her lips was warmly sliding down her oesophagus as she adjusted her body to minimise the back pain caused by her sitting position. She forced herself not to puke from the cocktail of odours wafting across the floor. Conjoined with her own bodily smells, as a result of irregular personal hygiene (if any), this olfactory mix could knock out a horse. How she continued to live was a daily miracle all by itself. She'd learnt to conserve her energies thinking less of others and even lesser of herself. It helped.
Thoughts of her family and their anguish over her situation, thoughts of a better tomorrow away from all these, thoughts of those she used to see before at first but no longer, thoughts of the despicable acts that she'd been put through more times than she could count by a coterie of inhuman ruffians, enervated her. So, from experience, she learnt to think only of the now. It kept her wits about her and though it was harder, she tried to stop crying altogether. It didn't help much.
As she sat, without much knowledge of the passage of time, only focused on living for the moment, she remained aware, differently. Aware only of her fears, that she may die from the ill health she was enduring in silence because to speak of it was to incur consequences. Aware of her uncertainty of what the next second held. Aware of the darkness that had become her daily outlook in life. Aware of the desecration of everything she possessed as private. Aware of the abuse of her childhood which she was never going to relive. There, she'd never have known of how international Chibok had become, how global Sambisa forest had grown and how the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls has snowballed into a celebrity rigmarole and social media frenzy. These held no meaning for her as she sat and stared into void. Hers has become a daily dose of fear, uncertainty, doubt, darkness and silence.
She laid down, tried to stomach the pain and closed her eyes to sleep, wishing they'd never open again. But she knew better. She'd wake up later and this horror story will continue.
She didn't even know it was 94 days. It'll be 95 tomorrow, and so on...
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