Dark Light
AARON ANSAH-AGYEMAN
DARK LIGHT
A ChrisEffe Bliss
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The Author
EPISODE 4
Eyram sighed heavily, put her head to one side and regarded her sister.
“So, you don’t care that Uncle Tim has now become a Christian and has lived ever since apologizing for what he did?” she asked softly. “That man cries almost anytime he set eyes on me, Ef! He regretted his dastardly acts and apologized, and keeps on apologizing! Effe, Uncle Tim lived most of his life in the States, and when he came down, he was a drug addict of sorts! When he ravaged us, he was high on cocaine! He’s now found Christ and become a different man! He’s dying inside, always begging you to forgive him!”
“It is not about forgiveness, Rammy, and you damn know it!” Effe said tightly as tears glistened in her eyes. “It is about what has happened to my head, to my psyche, and to my bloody life! Because of that beast, I’ve not been able to satisfy Steve in the way he deserves, Rammy!
And it seems I’m never going to be able to be with any man! Tim Kedem has given me this psychological horror that makes me so scared to make love that my whole system shuts down with unbearable pain!
I’m gripped from head to toe with acute fear and unbearable pain any time a man comes near me! Lovemaking has become an incurable disease! Don’t you dare ask me to accept what happened! If it had been as simple as forgiving, forgetting and moving on, I would have done it a bloody long time ago! Don’t ever dare judge me because my very life got ruined when my own parents turned their backs on me and let that beast of a man walk away unscathed!”
Eyram tried to speak again but she sighed hard and tears slowly came to her eyes.
“Effe, why haven’t you ever told me this before?” she said softly. “Oh, Lord! I never knew it has affected you this horribly! I’m so sorry! But there are experts who can…”
“Don’t even bother!” Effe cried as her own tears fell down her cheeks. “I’ve been seeing the best of professionals for five years now, Rammy. Nothing helps. It only gets worse. It is killing me inside slowly! And it always came back to the fact that after our trauma, when they let that beast go free, I was home in my room one day – about a year after the incident happened – when Tim Kedem came in. That day you had malaria and they took you to the hospital. I was alone in the house.”
“Oh, Jesus!” Eyram whispered, horrified. “Did he…did he…”
Effe’s tears rolled down her cheeks now.
“He told me I’ll always be his whore, his slut, and nobody in the world would be able to stop him,” Effe said tragically. “He touched my breasts…and other places as he mauled me and then took out his horrible thing! He was going to do it again but suddenly blood just began to spurt from my nose in torrents. I was that terrified! He quickly left the room then. When Mom and Dad came back, I told them what had happened. They only said they would not allow me to be alone with Tim Kedem again. I was dying inside, Eyram. I felt like killing myself, yes. Several times I tried to commit suicide because I felt so terrified, but something always stayed my hand.”
“That’s why you left home!”Eyram stated.
Effe nodded.
“Yes, Rammy, to put a great distance between me and that beast because if I had stayed home a moment longer with parents who would allow such a man to terrify me that badly, I would have killed myself eventually!”
Eyram put her hand on her sister’s shoulder and wiped tears from her eyes.
“You should’ve told me about this a long time ago, Ef,” she said softly. “Oh, how you have suffered! But let us address this as a family, please. I’ve seen our parents dying inside a little each time it is our birthday, Effe. I’ve witnessed their pain and torture because you’ve cut them off. I don’t blame you, Ef, and I’m not judging you…but I want you to know that those two wonderful people love you dearly, and everything they did was because of that love for you.”
She turned and headed for the door but stopped again and turned back to Effe. Her expression was sad as she looked at her sister.
“I saw you and Steve, saw your engagement,” Eyram said softly. “Congrats, Effe. You deserve your happiness.”
Effe followed her sister out of the door and regretted that action almost immediately because she saw her parents standing a short distance away, evidently waiting for Eyram.
Effe was shocked at the sight of her mother!
Ivy Kedem had always been strong and beautiful! She had been Effe’s role model, seemingly unbreakable, working single-handedly to take care of the family when her husband’s business collapsed!
Ivy had been like an angel, never complaining, always planning, executing, taking control.
But she looked so frail and aged now.
She had lost considerable weight since Effe last saw her, and she seemed to have aged more than seven years. The moment she saw Effe she gasped and looked at her daughter as if she had seen a ghost.
Tears came into Ivy Kedem’s eyes and slowly spilt down her cheeks. Her lips trembled and she raised trembling hands and placed them across her heart. Ken spoke to her, trying to hold her, but Ivy moved around him and slowly approached Effe.
She was weeping uncontrollably now as she stopped in front of Effe.
“Afi!” she whispered in a trembling voice. “Afi, my daughter! You’re breaking my heart, and you’re breaking my soul! You have treated your mother like dirt! I understand your anger, your pain and your bitterness, Afi Kedem! But does that mean you should push me faster to my grave? Oh, Afi, Afi, Afi! Forgive me, forgive us, otherwise, you will soon see me at the cemetery!”
And then, to Effe’s horror, Ivy Kedem dropped to her knees in front of her and put the back of one hand into the other in a gesture of begging, her face so tragic that it made tears come into the eyes of people standing nearby.
Ivy Kedem’s tears fell in torrents now and she gasped in-between, scarcely able to speak.
“Effe, my dearest daughter, please forgive me!” she wailed softly. “I can’t take this torture anymore!”
Effe’s lips were pressed together tightly.
Deep down she was so moved and shattered and emotionally destroyed.
To see her mother so vulnerable and beaten was more than she could take, and she would have probably burst into tears and embraced her mother if she had not seen another man appearing suddenly beside her father!
It was her father’s older brother, Tim Kedem!
He was wearing a double-breasted, round-necked short-sleeved grey suit. He was in his gold-rimmed spectacles. Looking forlorn and weak, he walked with the aid of a walking stick now, but he was still huge despite the fact that the hair on his head was all grey now.
He saw Effe and gasped suddenly, and then made his way slowly towards her!
Here was the man, the beast, the rapist, the wicked sadist who had destroyed her life and that of Eyram so completely!
Effe still woke up sometimes screaming with raw fear from a nightmare where this man had been chasing her! The pain was fresh and unforgotten! Memories of this man – so drunk and on a cocaine-high madness – prying her thighs apart and forcing his raging wicked member into her now came back to ravage Effe’s mind!
A sizzling raw fury and uncontrollable wrath soared within Effe. Her face closed up with a horrifically white rage as she watched her uncle approaching.
Ken Kedem was already beside his wife and was trying to pull her up when Tim Kedem stopped and removed his spectacles.
His eyes were filled with pain and deep shame as he looked at Effe. His lips trembled uncontrollably when he spoke.
“Effe, please…”
His voice trailed off when he saw the animalistic rage on Effe’s face and witnessed her lips pulling back from her teeth in a snarl.
Effe could not help herself.
She could not have stopped herself even if she had been able to. Her right fist drew back and she smashed into Tim Kedem’s face with all her fury behind it.
A lot of people screamed and gasped when Effe’s blow made Tim Kedem collapse to the floor with his walking stick and gold-rimmed glasses flying!
“Effe!” Eyram screamed in anguish as Tim lay on the floor with blood oozing from his shattered nostrils!
Effe smiled darkly at the sight of this horrible beast bleeding on the floor and then she stepped around him and walked rapidly towards the entrance. She heard her father calling her with pain in his voice but she did not stop walking until she got to her car in the parking lot.
“Effe!” her father’s stringent voice sounded behind her and she whirled around with a dark look on her face.
Ken Kedem had followed her and the expression of distress on his face was very pronounced. As Effe looked at him, she felt the tears pricking her eyes and slowly falling down her cheeks again.
She had loved this man, oh how she had loved him!
Her father had been her hero and her most poignant childhood memory of him was of her and Eyram kneeling on the huge armchair in their living room gazing out of the window at the main gate when it was half-past five in the evenings.
“Mommy, Mommy, what time is it?” she and Eyram would scream, waiting to hear that it was half-past five so that they would go and kneel on the armchair with their arms draped across its top and their chins resting on their arms, waiting anxiously for the gate to open and their superhero daddy to emerge.
“Daddiee, Dadiee, Dadiee, Dadiee!” the girls would scream and bound off the chairs, race to the main door, fling it open and run screaming into their proud father’s arms!
And he would drop his small black briefcase and sweep them into his arms with a smile of happiness on his face, kissing them on their foreheads and cheeks!
Yes, she had loved this man so much…and yet, in the end, he had allowed a beast to go free after hurting them, and then his status as a superhero had dwindled.
He walked towards her slowly and stopped within touching distance of her. When he spoke, his lips trembled and his voice was filled with unshed tears. Indeed, he had tears brimming in his eyes.
“I know you’re disappointed in me,” he said softly. “I won’t pretend I know the horror you went through when my own brother ravaged you. But because you’re my daughter, my princess, I’ve felt the pain even more than you. But you wouldn’t understand me. Maybe, one day, when you’re a parent yourself, a mother yourself, you would understand the choices I had to make.”
“No, Father, don’t ever say that to me!” Effe groaned with distressed passion as her tears fell harder. “I would protect my children! I’ll never embrace any beast that does to my daughter what your brother did to me, no matter how terrible my financial position would be! There was no excuse to let him walk free, Daddy! No excuse whatsoever!”
“Effe!” he said, distraught. “Then I have to accept the fact that you will never forgive me and that you will always hate me. That’s the cross I have to bear. But the decision not to press the case against Tim was mine and mine alone!
Your mother fought like a wild tiger to continue the case, to have Tim imprisoned but in the end, it was my decision not to pursue it. So, please, stop doing this to your mother! She’s old, she’s always in anguish and I have to witness her torture continuously. Effe, I beg of you! Even if you will treat me this way, have some compassion for your mother! Don’t wait for her to die before you realize how badly you are treating her!”
“It was a decision from both of you!” Effe screamed painfully, her voice breaking up. “It destroyed my life, Daddy! I live in absolute terror and pain now! And I’m afraid of all men! I have never made love to any man ever since he did that to me because there’s a disease in my head. I have a psychological poison that no matter what I do, no matter how much I forgive and pray and fast…that canker still rots away in my head! Every single day I find a reason to live on, to move on and not to kill myself!”
Ken gasped and this time his tears fell as his horrified eyes widened.
“What?” he whispered in a tight voice. “Oh, Effe! My princess!”
“You heard me, Daddy!” Effe said fiercely. “Sometimes I wake up at night screaming with horror! I break out in a sweat when I see a bed with a man on it, Daddy! My life is messed up because I’m with a man who loves me with all his heart and yet we can’t make love! Any time he comes near me my whole body shuts down with fierce and unbearable pain!
For ten years I’ve had to live a life of sheer terror because of what your brother did to me! I’m a successful, rich, and famous career woman but my life is not worth ashes because I’m still trapped in the horrors of my childhood…and nothing seems to work! Now, more than ever, I always think of suicide, suicide, suicide and I’m beginning to see it as a solution to the pain and horror I live in!”
“Effe!” Ken wept softly as he clutched his heart. “You can’t live through this alone, my princess! We’re a family, we love each other, and we give each other strength! I didn’t know you’d been suffering this much, my princess! Suicide? God no! Please, find it in your heart to forgive us and accept us again, please, Effe, I beg of you! For your mother’s sake, Effe! Don’t let her leave this earth with this torture of losing you, please!”
“She lost me as a daughter ten years ago,” Effe wept bitterly. “Both of you did! You have Eyram, keep her! To me, you both don’t exist!”
“Effe!” Ken whispered with horror, and then his legs could no longer support him. He collapsed slowly into one of the concrete benches on the parking lot. He linked his hands together and bowed his head.
Effe watched painfully as his shoulders shook, and then she saw tears falling heavily on his linked hands. She looked at his grey hair and for a wild moment she felt the old love, the old cauldron of unbridled love a girl had for her father, but with a herculean effort, she opened the car door, got in, and drove furiously out of the parking lot!
Her phone started to ring but it was the general tone so she paid no heed to it. If it had been Steve, she would have answered but she was too distraught to attend to any call now.
And as Effe drove, something bizarre happened: she laughed in a crude pathetic sort of way, an almost animal-like bray of sound. But tears fell down her face in the midst of that passionate and confused profusion of inner turmoil.
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Premium Story: A ChrisEffe Bliss :: DARK LIGHT :: EPISODE 3
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