Love Hates…
AARON ANSAH-AGYEMAN
LOVE HATES
A CHRISEFFE BLISS
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The Author
EPISODE 3
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Effe’s encounter with Chris Bawa eight years ago had been frenetic and difficult, but she had sincerely thought and felt she had no option, and that her actions were for the better good.
And here she was, staring the price she had to pay right in the face in the most unbelievable of coincidences. Maybe it was expected because Chris Bawa had never been a calm or forgiving soul. She had witnessed his atrocities personally, and that had been the impetus that had catapulted her into a direct confrontation with him. So, if she knew she had done the right thing, why was she feeling so breathless under the scathing attack of his wrath and hatred?
Oh, Chris, Chris, Chris!
She bit her lower lip sharply to stop the tears, breathing shallowly in a bid to get her composure back!
***
They made good time.
The truck was air-conditioned and more comfortable than Effe had expected. It was quite new, and hummed along pleasantly with no rough bumps. He was a master of the truck, and soon she leaned back and enjoyed the ride and the music.
Several times she tried to broach the subject, but his profile remained hard and unyielding, and she also decided to keep quiet.
They got to the Coastal Road and soon the drivers began to converse on the intercom although Chris’ inputs were perfunctory and largely non-committal.
And then, getting to the end of the Coastal Road, after they had been on it for about an hour, Wachipa’s voice came over the intercom.
“Wow, what’s this?” he said, sounding irritated.
“What’s up?” Wailer Vroom chipped in.
“Massive traffic ahead, guys,” Wachipa said.
“What?” Mike came in. “Traffic? On the Coastal Road? Never happens.”
“Check your GPS, pal. Long stretch of red you’ll see on it indicates thick traffic. I think something might be blocking the road,” Wachipa said. “No cars coming through from the other direction. What you think, Chris?”
“Rebels?” Wailer said, sounding concerned. “Bandits maybe?”
“Pull over,” Chris said, his eyes narrowing. “Protect yourselves. We’ll find out what’s going on.”
Effe looked at him with sudden unease.
It was getting dark rapidly, and she knew Tripoli was still a dangerous place to be without protection. There were still coordinated syndicates and gangs around engaged in the nefarious activities of kidnapping, murder, selling people into slavery and harvesting body organs.
“Is everything okay, Chris?” she asked hollowly.
In response he pulled the truck to the side of the road behind Mike’s.
He reached into a compartment between the seats, flipped up a cover and took out a heavy pistol.
“Chris?” Effe whispered at the sight of the gun, instantly scared.
He looked at her without expression.
“Get down,” he said quietly. “Stay close to me.”
She got down from the truck and moved round the front quickly, her heart beating with anxiety.
Mike Crankson had also gotten down, his face confused and a little bit worried. He joined them and noted the gun in Chris’ hand.
“Trouble?” he asked.
“Could be,” Chris said as he pushed the gun into his waistband at his back and covered it with his singlet. “No cars coming through from the opposite direction. Could be bandits, or maybe a motor accident. Let’s find out.”
They joined Wachipa and Wailer at the head of the line. Other motorists caught up in the traffic had also gotten down, looking mostly very worried.
As they walked forward a motorbike suddenly appeared from the other direction. Chris stopped suddenly, and Effe noticed how he tensed and put his hand at his back, obviously gripping the gun.
The motorbike rider reached them, and they saw that he was a teenaged kid. Chris raised his arm, and the boy slowed down and came to a stop.
“Hello,” Chris said. “Know what’s going on up there?”
The boy nodded, his face flushed with excitement.
“A bus from Tunisia,” he said in a rush, his English heavily accented. “Came off the road, and now its nose is above the ravine. It can topple down any moment.”
“Good Lord!” Effe cried with horror. “Are there people in it?”
“It is full of passengers, madam,” the boy said. “The police are there, trying to help.”
He rode on, and all of them relaxed a bit as they walked on toward the site of the accident. Chris pulled out his gun, flipped a switch on it, and then he took out the bullet clip. He put the clip in his pocket and gave the gun to Wailer.
“Hide it in your bag for me, Rasta,” he said. “Don’t want the cops to see that.”
Wailer nodded and put the gun in the leather bag slung across his shoulders.
They moved on past the cars, and soon the roadblock came into view.
“Oh, damn!” Wailer said the moment he saw what was happening.
The bus slewed across the road was a long one.
The driver had obviously lost control, and it had smashed into the concrete railings at the side of the road, and now almost half of its body was suspended over the ravine with a sharp, steep drop to the rocks and the sea below.
The police jeeps were parked across the road, and there was also an ambulance.
They could see the faces of the trapped passengers pressed against the windows, expressing their horror and mounting terror.
The back door of the bus was jammed, but some police personnel were trying to force it open with a myriad of tools whilst the passengers inside were getting agitated and beginning to whip themselves up into a frenzied panic.
“This is not good,” Chris whispered, his eyes roaming over the scene. “This is not good at all!”
He moved forward, but Wailer Vroom quickly reached out and held his arm.
“Whoa, bro, hold up,” Wailer said with worry on his face. “Cops over there. You know how touchy they can be.”
“I know,” Chris said, his face worried. “But they’re gonna open the back door, and those scared passengers in the back will rush out, making the front part of the car heavier.”
Effe’s eyes widened as Chris’ words sank in, and her face paled.
“Oh, goodness!” she whispered tremulously. “They’re now perfectly balanced. If the weight shifts slightly to the front the bus will plunge into the deep.”
“Damn!” Wachipa whispered, but Chris was already moving, walking purposefully past the other motorists and approaching the policemen.
Effe saw how the policemen became hostile toward him, but he stood his ground, speaking to them calmly.
“I knew it,” Wailer Vroom said worriedly. “Those cops can be shitty sometimes. Hope they don’t turn nasty on Chris.”
After a while Effe saw that a severe-looking policeman with a lot of ranking stripes and braids was approaching Chris. He spoke to him, and as Chris explained, the man nodded, and then suddenly he turned and shouted at his men.
Those who were cutting the door open stopped, and they all raced forward and grouped around Chris and he began talking calmly to them whilst he made simple gestures with his hands.
A few minutes later they parted.
Effe waited, breathless with worry, and watched as the ambulance reversed and approached the bus on its back.
A winch was unwound from the ambulance and two policemen attached them to the back of the bus.
The police chief then brought out a hailer and began addressing the people trapped in the bus.
“He’s telling them all to move carefully to the back of the bus, row by row,” Mike Crankson explained.
“Oh, yeah,” Wailer said with admiration. “To shift the heavier load to the back of the bus so that it doesn’t topple. Chris’ idea, no doubt.”
Chris walked towards them again, his face deadpan.
“What now?” Wailer asked.
“The ambulance will move toward the Tunisian stretch and power the winch, hopefully dragging the bus round and bringing the driver’s side back towards the road” he said. “The bus will be put into reverse, and luckily if it gets enough bite from the front tyres it would reverse safely back to the road.”
“Dicey,” Wachipa said worriedly. “Could still topple over if that driver makes the wrong move. And I can see he’s already damn scared. This could be a very horrendously bad idea, bro.”
“Sure, but worth a try,” Chris said. “Seems like I gotta get on the edge once more lads.”
“Why?” Effe asked suddenly, her face alarmed. “What are you going to do, Chris? What are you talking about? Surely, you’re not planning on getting aboard that bus, are you?”
“And what do you care?” he asked coldly as his eyes bored into her. “Since when did you start wishing me well?”
Effe gasped and her lips trembled, but he was already striding away with long slides, head high, eyes calculating.
Effe watched him, suddenly sick to her stomach, and then she saw the others looking at her strangely, and she tried a sheepish smile.
“This thing with Chrissy,” Wachipa said, and he sounded worried. “I’ve never seen him this rude and nasty toward any woman. Generally, he is always the perfect gentleman. It is worrying, and I wonder what you did to him to bring out the beast mode in him, lady.”
Effe looked at him uncertainly and a sad smile creased her face.
“We had a bad encounter many years ago,” she said with a sigh. “It seems to me he never let it go.”
Her stomach lurched again, however, when she saw Chris being helped up by some of the policemen, and then he climbed the back of the bus, and suddenly he got onto the roof and began to walk towards the driver’s side!
“So reckless!” Effe said with sudden alarm as her heart lurched with sheer fear. “Always such a reckless boy!”
“Yes, he’s reckless most times,” Wailer said gently, his eyes narrowing as he regarded Effe. “You do know him.”
Effe bit her lower lip as she watched Chris, sending up a little prayer for him. A slight shift in weight distribution and he could end up at the bottom of the ravine.
And with what she could see from where she was standing, the drop below would be on sheer jagged rocks! If Chris fell from that height his body would be cut up into pieces by the sharp rocks below, and he would certainly die a most brutal and horrible death.
Everybody was watching him. The police chief spoke into his hailer again, gesticulating at the driver of the bus who nodded, his face terrified, and then he opened his door. He quickly stood up and moved toward the back of the bus.
Chris lowered himself from the roof of the bus through the door the driver had opened, and slipped down its side lithely into the driver’s seat. He stuck his left arm out of the window and wound it twice in a circle.
The police chief spoke, and then the ambulance started up and moved, as the winch began to wind-up. The bus lurched alarmingly, making all the onlookers gasp with sudden trepidation, and then it began to edge sideways, coming round slowly until half of its’ front tyres bit the earth, and then Chris hit the ignition, revved the car, and then swung the steering expertly as he slipped the gear into reverse.
The space that he had to manoeuvre the bus through was extremely narrow and constricted with the jagged rock edges where the bus had originally broken through.
He revved the engine and reversed in one fluid fashion, his palm on the steering and turning it as his eyes fixed on his driving and rear-view mirrors.
It was blinding and it was awesome as he brought the bus through the hole it had created in the protective barrier, and even as people screamed in alarm, he turned it round expertly back into the road, moved forward a bit, and then parked the bus.
There was instantaneous shouts and applause from the stunned crowd and the policemen. Most of the women had clamped their hands across their eyes, and some across their lips.
Basically, it had been an impossible mission, and death had opened its yawning mouth at every stage but…Chris had done it.
When he got out, he was suddenly surrounded by the crowd, patting him and holding him, and many began taking selfies with him. There was a patient look on his face as the women clamoured around him with excited cries and flashing phones.
Effe turned away.
She was shaking so much.
She knew it could have ended so disastrously. It could have gone so very wrong, and he could have died right here on a foreign stretch of road in a strange land.
She walked on unsteady legs back to the truck and stood waiting for him.
It took some time, and then the police jeeps drove past, and a moment later the police chief’s BMW came along, stopped, and Chris got out. He chatted with the policeman for a minute, and then they shook hands with the chief handing over a card to Chris and pumping his hand effusively with an admiring smile, and then the car moved away.
Chris crossed the road to the truck and unlocked it with the remote.
More cars are driving past now, and a moment later the bus drove by. The driver slowed down and honked excitedly when he saw Chris. There was a monster of a smile on his sweaty face, and he waved his hand effusively at Chris.
The passengers shouted and waved at Chris with varying looks of admiration and devotion.
Chris waved back to them, and then he got into the truck beside Effe.
He started up and moved the truck onto the road again.
It was getting quite dark now, and he switched on the powerful headlights.
They drove for about five minutes, and then Effe spoke softly.
“You could’ve died!” she said softly.
“Not likely,” he said softly. “I took a calculated risk with all the angles worked out. But don’t pretend you even cared whether I lived or died.”
“Chris!”
His name was torn from her very depths, and she turned toward him with a pain-stricken face, shaking her head numbly.
“How could you say such a thing to me, Chris Bawa?”
He turned to her, and she saw how bitter his expression was, and when he spoke his voice was filled with harsh tones.
“Those were your last words to me, Effe Kedem, eight years ago, remember?”
“What now, Chris?” she asked numbly, painfully. “Why are you bent on hurting me so much? What did I say to you?”
“Eight years ago, when I stepped out of that church in beach road, it was raining, remember? I was going after Baaba, and you were at the entrance. Before I stepped out the door you looked me in the face and told me you wished the lightning would strike me dead, remember? Right there with Baaba and Jonathan and all the bloody congregation!
You wished me dead after your little charade that destroyed my life forever! What difference does it make whether I died eight years ago or now, you damn bloody witch? That was what you wished for me, so cut out the crap and the pretence that you care about me, Effe Kedem. You can’t bloody fool me. I know how dark your heart really is!”
Tears came to Effe’s eyes then even though she fought against it so hard, but they rolled down unheeded. She felt the pain in her heart and inside her head as she remembered that night, that most terrible night before they parted ways forever.
She remembered his pain eight years ago as he stepped into the rain and turned and watched her. The rain pelted him in his wedding suit as the crowd looked at him from inside the church and Baaba fled through the rain…a wedding that never was because Chris, the groom, had been disgraced before the vows could be said!
His face had been cut up with deep unbearable pain as he stood in the rain looking at Effe, and that look of sheer dejection had haunted Effe ever since even though that had been the last sight she had had of Chris Bawa…and Lord, how those final words had haunted her for many years, words she wished now, above all things, that she had never uttered to him!
Suddenly, the intercom cackled, and Wailer Vroom’s voice came on.
“C.B, you better turn off the damn intercom, man!” he said in an emotion-filled voice.
And Effe knew that the other men had heard Chris’ pained and scathing words across the intercom.
Chris reached over and picked up the hand receiver, and switched off the intercom.
“Chris!” Effe whispered, and her voice was trembling badly. “I was hurt and I very angry at you that day. Yes, I might’ve have said that, but surely you must know I never meant any harm to come to you. Oh, Chris! I was simply reacting to the exuberant passion of the moment, a young girl who felt she had done something good for her friend. I’m not trying to make excuses but those words were uttered in anger, with spite and with the childish passion of a twenty-year-old girl! I never meant those words, Chris, please!”
“Yes, you did, Effe!” he said harshly. “Just shut up already! Stop lying. It doesn’t dignify you. I hate your bloody lies most, goddamn it! You never meant any harm to come to me? Is that the reason why you came and testified against me in court?”
Effe looked at him with horror all over her face then, and she shook her head slightly as if he had hit her. Her face was filled with incomprehension and a terrible feeling of doom.
“What court, Chris?” she asked numbly, her voice very unstable. “Testified against you for what? What are you talking about? I never testified against you! Where? What case was it? The last time I saw you was on that wedding day, Chris. I can never testify against you!”
“Oh, you damn lying bitch!” he said passionately, and the look on his face took on a deeper shade of hatred. “You damn bloody bitch, Effe! You’re sitting there telling me you never testified against me? I was sitting in the bloody dock opposite you when you spewed all those damn lies about me that cost me three bloody years of my life after you tore up my life on my wedding day! And you can sit there and look me in the eyes and still have the audacity and the effrontery to lie to my face? Shit-fuck! What kind of demon are you, Effe? Oh, how I wish I never ever met you, Effe Kedem! If only I could, I would’ve torn you up into pieces limb by bloody lying limb!”
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LOVE HATES :: A CHRISEFFE BLISS :: EPISODE 2
LOVE HATES :: A CHRISEFFE BLISS :: EPISODE 1
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