Bloody, bloody

 

O.W.O: Friday 4 May 2018

 She attempts escape twice, both tries fail. She is locked in her room, fed through the barricaded window. When she tries to slash herself with a fork, cousin is ordered to supervise her.

The day approaches as a snail. Her wails torment their sleep. Cousin commits suicide.

The day comes. She is not caught as she slithers a knife into her wedding gown. Mother sprinkles frankincense and frangipani essences on her face, Sisters rub sunflower seed oil into her feet.

She glows.

With hatred.

She is led to the town hall, Mother squeezing her hand, smiling at her. As a rock hardened by the sun, so her face is. A bald man engages the ceremony. For a score minute he rattles on the divine intertwining of man and woman.......

"Do you, Aseki Aseki Morunwa, pledge to accept Tundila Burewad as your lawfully wedded husband, in circumstance good and bad, true and false, in health and death, in more and opulence, till the sun ceases?

The wind howls. Her skirt bellows. Her hair is a halo. "Over my dead body!" It turns into a movie. The crowd do not believe. The knife she brandishes. His neck she slits. The hall erupts into screams. She is not finished. She turns the wheel. And drives the knife in................to her chest.

The crowd is still. It cannot be real. They squint, they see. They are dead, truly? The bald man collapses. This is the trigger. The whole place scatters. The groom's mother wails, flails, scratches Aseki's mother's eyes.

People flee, fearing they have been cursed by the blood spilled.

"Let us go and wash our eyes, so we shall not see such again."