Love Hates…
AARON ANSAH-AGYEMAN
LOVE HATES
A CHRISEFFE BLISS
[avatar]
The Author
EPISODE 9
[wp_ad_camp_1]
Fatima regarded Effe for some time through the mirror above, and then she sighed deeply.
“I was wrong about you then,” she said finally. “I was having this silly feeling about you and Chris. I was of the mind that you two were – or used to be – lovers, and it was beginning to worry me.”
“What gave you that idea?” Effe asked, aghast. “You know Chris is married, right?”
Fatima nodded in the mirror, but her beautiful face remained defiant.
“I know, yes, but that doesn’t stop me from loving him,” she said with a faint smile. “I have known him for almost a year now, you know. He came to the restaurant that one night, and stood in the front row just staring at me as I sang, with a beer in his hand, you know, just staring. He just stood there watching me through three songs, and after a while I began singing to him, so thrilled to have such a handsome man staring at me with such unashamed longing.”
She giggled, obviously taken up by her memories, and a sad smile flitted across her face.
“After my act I went backstage, and he followed me right to my changing room, and in the full glare of the other singers he just took me in his arms and gave me the longest, sweetest hug I had ever known. No words, no attempt to kiss me, or assault me.
Just that wonderful long hug took my heart away. And then, he turned to leave. I just held his hand, pulled him back, and slipped my arms around his neck. It was crazy, I know…but a moment later we kissed, naturally. I fell in love with him, and ever since my days had just been spent waiting for him to pass through again!”
“Still doesn’t make it right, you know,” Effe said gently. “Carrying out a sexual relationship with a married man is not the best, Fatima. It would only end in heartache for you.”
“I know,” she said with a sad smile. “That’s why I finally decided to move on with Tareq, a man that had loved me for years, as he claimed. But he was very abusive, and coupled with that he already had two wives. But I love Chrissy, yes. He’s my qalbi, and anytime he wants me, he can have me.”
“Qalbi, yes, you call him that,” Effe said softly. “And he calls you…habib? I forget.”
Fatima chuckled.
“Habibati, both endearments in Arabic,” she said softly. “Qalbi means ‘my heart’ and habibati means ‘my love, or my sweetheart, my darling.’ Yes, he has my heart. He will always be my one and only true love although I know I can never own him now, or be with him forever.”
They were both quiet for a while, staring at their reflections in the mirror above, and Effe conceded that speaking to Fatima had helped, in a very small way, to take her mind off the horror that she found herself in.
“But the way Chris treated you in the guest room,” Fatima said suddenly. “That was a side of him I had never seen before. He was cruel, and he wanted to hurt you. You two have a history, don’t you?”
Effe was quiet for a while, and then she sighed audibly with great misery.
“Yes, we do have a history, and a painful one at that, I guess,” she said morosely, glad of a way to take her mind off her present predicament. “It happened a long time ago, almost a decade. Eight years, to be precise. I was twenty years then you know, filled with a passion for life and solidly against any form of abuse against women.
Chris was twenty-five or six years old then, and dating my best friend, Baaba. She was twenty-four, and they were set to get married in five months’ time. I was then in the United States studying, and I just knew Chris from the pictures Babs sent of them to me. Obviously, Chris knew she had a best friend called Effe, but he never really got to see a photo of me.”
“I see,” Fatima said softly, breathing hard. “And he loved Baaba very much, right?”
“Well, that was the impression I got, and then I came home after my degree, to wait a year before returning to the States for my Masters. Baaba’s father was working then in a company set up by Brand Bawa, who was Chris’ father. Actually, it was a partnership between Brand Bawa and Ransford Afful, who were two good friends.
But Brand Bawa provided a bigger capital, so he was the majority owner of the company. Later, their two sons joined the company. Chris’ father, I learnt, died in a car accident, and so his share in the company automatically passed to Chris. And that was about seventy percent, you know. Ransford’s son was Jonathan, and he also worked in the company, like I said.
So, basically Chris now owned more of that company because of his father’s large share. Well, when I came to Ghana, I called Babs, wanting to see her so badly because she wanted me to be her Maid of Honour. But she was on admission in the hospital. Jonathan came for me at home and took me to see my friend in the hospital.”
Baaba was in the hospital because of an injured shoulder purportedly sustained from falling down the stairs at her house.
Effe drove Baaba home when she was eventually discharged from the hospital five days later. Doctor Gabriel Anaman, who had attended to Baaba, had said something in a serious voice before letting her go.
“Young lady, you can’t continue this way!” he said sternly. “Next time you come back here injured with a silly reason again I’m reporting that beast to the police, do you hear me?”
Baaba took a troubled look at Effe and then she nodded.
Effe paused in her narration for a moment, and then she sighed miserably and continued.
“During the five days she was on admission, Baaba called Chris in my presence several times with tears in her eyes, begging him to at least come and visit her, but he gave one reason or the other,” Effe said to Fatima. “And what the doctor said troubled me.
I was beginning to get a gloomy idea of the sort of man this Chis Bawa was. Anyway, when I took Baaba home, I waited in the sitting-room and then I heard a crash in her bedroom. I rushed into the bedroom and saw her on the floor. She had obviously slipped whilst trying to put on a dress. She tried to tell me to stay in the living-room, but dearest me, I was appalled by the several horrendous scars on her back, buttocks and across her thighs!
I was quite horrified, and I pestered her to tell me what was going on because that was not how I remembered her! She refused to tell me how she had sustained such horrendous scars all over her body, but like I said, I was beginning to suspect Chris.”
Effe rekindled her closeness with Baaba as they continued to shop for her wedding. Several times Baaba called Chris telling her that Effe was around and that he should come and meet her, but he was always busy, promising but never showing up.
“It was about a month later after my return, when I was sorting clothes for Baaba in her bedroom that Chris came around,” Effe continued. “Baaba freaked out, you know, because she had forgotten he was coming around.
Evidently, he came in each Friday night to make love to her, and Baaba was terrified that I was with her that particular Friday. She forced me into the wardrobe despite my protestations, but the terror on her face finally convinced me to enter the wardrobe and promise not to come out no matter what happened.”
“And what happened, Effe?” Fatima asked softly, her face absolutely shocked by the horrible story she was hearing about Chris Bawa, the man she loved.
“What had happened next was a nightmare, Fatima!” Effe said in a haunted voice. “It was something that made me hate Chris!”
Effe, still hidden in the wardrobe, had seen Chris Bawa coming in and flopping on the bed. He had spoken with Baaba for a while, and then tried to make love to her.
Baaba had told him she still felt great pain in her shoulder whenever she did something rigorous, and that he should wait for at least a week or two more.
Chris had been quite unprepared for that, and Baaba had left the bedroom because she did not want Effe to witness what was quickly generating into a fight.
Baaba had calmly and gently asked Chris to come to the living-room because the bed was messed up.
A few minutes later, Effe had heard a sharp cry, and then the sounds of violence.
“I left the wardrobe and rushed toward the living-room,” Effe told Fatima in a pained voice. “Baaba was facing the door and waved me away frantically, warning me with her eyes not to let Chris see me. Concerned for her, I stood in the doorway watching with horror as Chris slapped and beat her quite ruthlessly.
This brutal beating was simply because she said she could feel pain in her shoulder and could not make love to him that day. A ferocious slap from Chris finally threw Baaba to the floor, and I saw Chris kicking her as she lay on the floor. I cried, Fatima. I cried at the cruelty of that man, and I vowed Baaba would not marry such a beast!”
Fatima looked into the mirror at Effe with horrified eyes.
“You’re describing a different person, Effe!” she whispered, aghast. “Surely, the Chris I know isn’t that callous! Chris will never beat a woman!”
“He did, my dear!” Effe said painfully. “I was there, and I saw it all. I remained inside the bedroom watching, impotent with rage. I wanted so much to go and help my friend, but she pleaded with me so fiercely with her eyes, quite aware that Chris might kill her if he knew I was in the room. Later, Baaba refused to go to the hospital for fear that Chris might be arrested.
I forced her, begging her to go to a different hospital. But then she told me the real reason he was scared to go to hospital for treatment. You see, Baaba had a problem. Her father was a senior accountant at Bawa and Afful, the importing company Chris and Mr. Afful owned. Baaba’s father had embezzled a huge amount of money, and faced going to prison if the case went to court.
Although Mr. Ransford Afful and his son Jonathan wanted to convert the embezzled money into a long-term loan, Chris would have nothing of it. Remember, he now owned the majority share! In the end, he forced Baaba to agree to his proposal of marriage even though she was in love with Jonathan, and Chris knew it!”
“Oh, that was horrible!” Fatima cried, horrified. “That is not Chris! No, no, I can’t believe that!”
“Maybe he has changed, and I wish to God that he has changed,” Effe said sadly. “But that was the Chris my best friend, Baaba, told me about. And I was furious! Much later, Jonathan came around, and was so alarmed to see Baaba in that condition. I suggested we should do something to save her and her father from the tyranny of Chris. Eventually, Jonathan came up with a plan that he thought might work, and I quickly agreed to it because I hated Chris Bawa so fiercely by then!”
Fatima scowled and squinted at Effe.
“And what was this grand plan?” she asked carefully.
“Actually, it was a two-fold plan,” Effe said, and she sounded sad at this moment as her mind wandered. “The first part was for me to go into a relationship with Chris, you know, and gather incriminating evidence of an affair to mess up his marriage to Baaba.
The second part was that Jonathan would try and raise a loan to pay off the money Baaba’s father embezzled. If the money was paid on time, then my part would become redundant. But if the wedding date arrived before the money was ready, then we would use the evidence I get to ruin the marriage. It progressed rather quickly from there.
Jonathan arranged for me to get a job at the restaurant he and Chris normally ate at. According to him, Chris loved beautiful fair girls. He came in with Jonathan a few days after I got the job, and yes, he noticed me and took my number. I led him on, pretending that I didn’t know Baaba. I used a different name, Mabel.”
Fatima nodded with a pensive expression.
“So you began a relationship with Chris?” she asked carefully.
“In a way, yes,” Effe continued. “But Jonathan provided two martial arts men that were always tailing us, you know, to protect me because Chris was so violent and abusive.”
“And did he ever hit you?” Fatima asked.
“No, but that was not any divine act because he didn’t abuse Baaba until two years into their relationship,” Effe said. “He tried to make love to me though. You see, we set up my apartment and rigged it with hidden cameras that took pictures of him in various stages of undress, and so I got all the evidence I needed. But he was such a charming man, and incredibly handsome too, you know. And he was nothing but sweetness to me, and along the line my anger and hatred of him began to wane.”
“I can understand,” Fatima said with a wan smile. “I love him because of the way he makes me feel when I am with him.”
“Yes, so along the line I kept telling Jonathan to hurry up with the loan, because quite frankly I was getting frantic. Chris kept kissing and touching me, each hard to resist but I had to remember the scars on Baaba’s body to keep on hating him,” Effe said. “Their wedding day eventually came.
Before then, I had almost stopped what I was doing to him, but two weeks before the wedding he slammed Baaba into a wall, hurting her neck severely, and she had to be in a cervical neck traction device for a week. Baaba told me she had vaginal infection, and denied him sex, telling him to wait so that she could heal properly for their wedding night, but he smashed her into a wall in anger, and went ahead to make love to her. It made me hate him all over again, and determined to go through with it.”
“Wait a second,” Fatima said quietly. “Had he said he loved you then? And did he tell you he was going to get married?”
“He did,” Effe replied sombrely. “He told me he had fallen in love with me completely, but unfortunately he was with a woman he had promised to marry, and didn’t want to hurt her and her father, of all the ironies. He told me he had not expected to fall in love with me.
To him, I had just been an intended target at first, you know, but being with me, for just a couple of months, had opened his heart to a love he never knew existed. So, according to him, he would go ahead and marry Baaba simply because of his love for her father. That was when I knew he was a cold-blooded man who didn’t love me at all.”
“And so, although he told you how much he had fallen in love with you, he was quite prepared to go ahead with the wedding to your friend, because of the love he had for her father?” Fatima asked quietly.
“Yes, but I knew he was only lying,” Effe said sadly. “He just wanted to make love to me. How could he say it was because of the love he had for her father when he was actually threatening Baaba’s father with imprisonment?”
“And did he force you…I mean, to make love to him?” Fatima asked, intrigued.
“No, he didn’t,” Effe said. “But he never stopped trying. He sounded confused and in pain, you know, a man torn between marrying a woman he did not love and staying with his newfound love. But I didn’t love him, because I knew what he was capable of. But, above all things, I just wished Jonathan could have gotten that money, and I didn’t have to go through what I inevitably did to Chris.”
“Meaning you ruined the wedding, right?”
Effe nodded, and for several moments she could not speak.
When she eventually did, her voice was quite unsteady.
“There were a lot of incriminating pictures, you know,” Effe said miserably. “I was supposed to show it to the pastor in front of Baaba before the marriage ceremony itself, so that Baaba could use it as an excuse to leave Chris. However, Jonathan claimed he could not process the pictures on time, and so we all went to the church. I was so anxious, just wishing the pictures would be ready before many guests arrived, but Jonathan delayed.
It was when the Pastor asked if anybody had any objection to the marriage, just before their vows, that a man stood up with an envelope. I recognized him as one of the security experts Jonathan hired to protect me from Chris. Jonathan never told me he was planning such a dastardly act. The man walked up to the aisle and showed the pictures to the Pastor and Baaba.
Incriminating pictures of Chris in just his briefs kissing me on a bed, in a room, outside, everywhere. The date the pictures were taken were printed boldly at the bottom of the photos, showing they were recent photos.”
“Oh, goodness me!” Fatima said, horrified. “Just before their vows? You people were so horrible!”
“I was only helping a friend!” Effe shouted defensively. “I never meant it to go that far. They told me it would be done some days before the wedding. I never knew Jonathan had planned it to be at that precise moment!”
“Helping a friend, really?” Fatima said, her tone bitter. “You think Baaba’s father wouldn’t have preferred going to prison than letting his daughter marry a brute like Chris, as you described? What stopped Baaba from walking out if she was being abused that badly, huh?”
“Because of her father!” Effe cried. “He was old, and had a bad heart! Prison would have killed him, and the guilt would’ve haunted Baaba forever!”
“And because of that, on the most important date of his life, the three of you shattered Chris’ life in front of his guests, business associates he respected, friends that respected and cared for him?”
“At the time that seemed the only way to stop the wedding, at least temporarily,” Effe continued. “The assumption was that anything he did to Mr. Abeiku Brooks, Baaba’s father, would be seen by the public as a vindictive act because Baaba left him at the altar, and so he would let the case rest for a while…and by the time he decided to take them on, the loan would’ve been ready.”
“And was it ever ready?” Fatima asked softly.
“Yes,” Effe said softly. “It was a horrible day in the church that day. Baaba put on a fine act, as if she didn’t know anything about the pictures, and left the church in tears after shouting she would never forgive him for his cheating and betrayal, and that she never wanted to see him again. She threw the pictures away, and the guests scooped them up, and eventually everybody saw them. As I said, my face was edited out of the photos, you see.”
“And Chris?” Fatima asked with pity.
“He went out after Baaba, to beg her,” Effe continued. “It was raining heavily then. He stopped her at the entrance of the church and shook her very hard, you know, with his fingers digging rather cruelly into her arms.”
“Because he was hurting!” Fatima cried fiercely. “The man was obviously confused and in pain, realizing that you made a fool out of him, and wanting to stop Baaba from leaving! Of course, he would hold her hard!”
“You’re defending him blindly,” Effe said softly. “I saw what he did. I saw the horrible scars on her body, the many times he sent her to the hospital! So, I pushed him away from Baaba and told him I wished he would die, that lightning would strike him and kill him. Baaba fled to the car, and Jonathan took her away.”
“Let me guess, Jonathan was the best man, right?” Fatima asked softly.
“Yes, he was,” Effe said. “By that time, to make Chris unaware of my real identity, we made one of our friends become the maid of honour. So yes, Chris stared at me without a word, and then he just walked out of the church, and that was the last I saw of him.
A week later, the loan was ready and paid, and Mr. Brooks was free. Jonathan wanted to file a charge against Chris for rape and abuse against Baaba, but I refused to play along. I told them it was enough that Mr. Brooks was free. And then I left Ghana and returned to the States, cutting my stay short.”
[wp_ad_camp_1]
“Chris never got in contact with you again?” Fatima asked.
“No,” Effe said dejectedly. “I came back five years later and began working in my father’s firm. I was told Chris sold his shares to Mr. Ransford Afful and moved on, and nobody heard of him since. I searched for him on the internet, though.”
“Why?” Fatima hissed coldly. “You destroyed the man’s life – granted you thought you were doing the right thing – and so why did you want to see him?”
Effe tried to shrug.
“I did a lot of thinking when I was in the States,” she said softly. “Yes, I was young and passionate, and did what I thought was right, but the look he gave me as he stood in the rain really haunted my dreams for a long time. I guess I just wanted to see him and give him an explanation of why I did what I did. But I couldn’t find him on the internet or anywhere. Seemed he just disappeared into thin air. I was able to put him out of my mind…and eight years later he turned up and saved my life on the streets of Tripoli.”
“So, you had nothing to do with his imprisonment?” Fatima asked coldly. “He was in prison for three years eight years ago, you know. He told me about it. Actually, they sentenced him to prison for fifteen years on charges of rape and assault on Baaba, with devastating reports from that doctor who took care of Baaba, and from you!”
Effe shook her head miserably.
“No, no, I had nothing to do with that,” she said. “He accused me of testifying against him, but I never did. I thought it was because he hated me so much, and that he was making up stories about me.”
“Chris never makes up stories, Effe,” Fatima said, her voice a bit calm. “He got fifteen years, but after three years he was released, but he refused to tell me the reason why he was set free after just three years. Maybe you should talk to him, if we ever get out of here, that is.”
Before Effe could reply, the door at the far end of the huge room opened, and Tareq came in. He was not alone. The gigantic man was behind him.
Both of them were holding decanters filled with wine, and they were speaking quietly and smiling.
They were both naked.
[/passster] [wp_ad_camp_1]Love Hates, A ChrisEffe Bliss, Love Hates, A ChrisEffe Bliss. A ChrisEffe Bliss, Love Hates, A ChrisEffe Bliss, Love Hates . Love Hates, A ChrisEffe Bliss, Love Hates, A ChrisEffe Bliss. A ChrisEffe Bliss, Love Hates, A ChrisEffe Bliss, Love Hates. Love Hates, A ChrisEffe Bliss, Love Hates, A ChrisEffe Bliss. A ChrisEffe Bliss, Love Hates, A ChrisEffe Bliss, Love Hates, Love Hates, A ChrisEffe Bliss
Premium Story: A ChrisEffe Bliss :: LOVE HATES :: EPISODE 8
[stextbox id=”alert” caption=”WARNING”]Exclusive Content to http://www.aaron-ansah-agyeman.com Do not copy or share on any other site. Do not share on any WhatsApp, Facebook or Social Media page. ONLY SHARE THE LINKS TO THE STORY[/stextbox] [stextbox id=”info” caption=”JOIN US ON WHATSAPP“]
Join Our WhatsApp Family.
Click HERE To Join Our WhatsApp Group 2
[/stextbox] [insert-comment-form]
5 Comments
Leave your reply.