MY CHILDHOOD BEDROOM
Mama would carry me on her laps, patting my back as she shook her legs rhythmically, hoping somehow as it often happens, that I fall asleep so she could "get rid'' of me. This routine has been successful at some nights when instead of singing me lullabies or telling stories, she would spend the early night hours knitting sweater my elder sister and I would wear during the cold weathers of Tropical harmattan.
This particular night was not one of those successful nights, so, my eyeballs forced the eyelids open even when Mama rubbed them close with the palm of her right hand while the other hand patted my back. She was not going to drop me on that huge mahogany bed that contained the mattress she and papa shared. I was never going to stay there alone.
So she had to tell me stories as she always did. Stories that were counterproductive; stories that kept my eyeballs popping off its sockets; stories that made my heart raise to highest heavens; stories that made me cling more closely to her bosom in fear. This was her kind of stories; this was the only stories she told or knew how to tell.
Remembering this now, I wonder if she told those stories so with time I fall asleep like I did for lullabies? Or If she just told them to while away her already lost time. I think it's for the latter because her stories never allowed me any sleep. Her stories made me cuddle between her and papa on their mattress, as I tried to suppress the mental image of her stories in my head. Her stories were horror.
Once, she told me a story of a house that was been haunted by demons in a village I still suspect could be my paternal village(reasons withheld). The house was built of mud blocks. It had raffia palms and spear grasses for a roof.
Because of its closeness to the pathway that lead to the village stream, it could never be passed unnoticed. Mama claimed the first occupant of the house was an old widow who was thought to be a witch just after the death of her husband, and that she had left her husbands village to settle in this present village. She soon died of loneliness and depression. However, her death, mama, claimed was the genesis of her whole story. At this point I knew mama has come prepared with her full plate of horror to serve me.
I was already scared, I had the consciousness of mamas bedroom. I could here the crickets cry; I could here the whistling sounds of insects I didn't know. It was as if I heard spirits chit chatting in an incomprehensible manner. Yet, I couldn't stop myself from wanting to hear the rest of Mama's story. Clinging closely to her, I was determined to go through the journey albeit with her.
"That was the genesis of a haunted house" she repeated.
"Villages would see moving images if they looked at the house while taking the part" she stressed the more, while I shivered. Mama continued..
" the image was a partial replica of those looking at the house, so that if you kept on looking, shocked and wondering why your image was on an abandoned house, the image would be seen moving towards you." She said
"For the Ears, however, The image has some thing like the wings of a butterfly; wings too big for the head. The mouth, a small aperture with two very long upper incisors, with longer canines flanking them and.."
She said and was interrupted by papa who just entered the bedroom to sleep.
Trapped in my imagination - and trying to picture what distorted image the house would make of me - mama placed me on the bed, beside and close to papa's back while she lay just next to me, facing me. That was the end of the story for her, but it wasn't for me. It wasn't for my head. I kept making images; creating what would look like the moving images the hunted house made.
I was just about 7 to 10 years old, and mama's bedroom was my bedroom; my folklore room more appropriately.
MY BEDROOM AS A TEEN
Life has not always remained frightful at nights. As a teen, I was done with mama's folklore and If I needed any semblace to it, I knew literature text to find them.
My bedroom now was more like my true friend. I talked to her about my new crush; the girl I met on the street while I imagined her portrait hanging juxtaposed to mine on the wall just opposite the wall of my head rest.
Those days when there was no crush and nobody to think of, I would lie on my 12 spring bed with just my brief on. Eyes Scatting from the cupboard of personal effects on the wall that is to the left of my bed, to the fridge next to it and microwave on top of the fridge, then to the door on the adjacent wall and finally to my portriat on the opposite wall.
This was the sequence - there was no other - that allowed me the time to create an imaginary pretty image of a lady with which to replace my portrait. For the few minutes of some repetitive primitive work, by my hands, that followed, I would try earnestly to have her on that wall and also in my mind, until I find myself in a primitive spasmic contractions of my hip, my abdomen and at times my whole body. Only then would I take my eyes off the wall, and in exhaustion, submit like the biblical Adam to the unmountable god of deep sleep.
That was during my teen; in the confines of my bedroom; my personal brothel; my love
MY ADULT BEDROOM
"You have a spiritual wife, a female demon"
"Succubus it is called" my over spiritual Nigerian pastor narrated. Pastor Okon seamed to know a lot about demons. He knew their surnames, the number of bodies they had once possessed, the amount of blood they had ever consumed, he knew the intricacies of demonic languages. His parishioners claimed he even commuicated fluently with demons!
It was this "specialist " pastor that I had come to see. Yes, I needed to understand from him, what it really was; what it really needed, and why it has chosen to get it from me.
It all started on a Sunday night, one of those sundays I had failed to attend church service for no other reason but that spirituality was a thing of the heart and not the church building. I remember shutting down my phone at about 11pm. I had just climbed my bed, slept for thirty minutes or more when my room suddenly started to vibrate violently. The window curtains were raised and they stuck passionately, with a force like magnetic, to the ceiling.
The door curtain hung loose from it's top. It was still vertical as if it stood on legs! Certainly it had legs, for it sluggishly moved towards my bed with a wobbling gait. then swiftly and gracefully, it also cat walked towards my bed yet never reaching it. I made efforts to screem but the words got trapped in my throat. I could now make out its face. It was that of a pretty lady.
A face that caused some ripples in the stream of my memory. Just then, as if she realised I had made a thing of her face, she pounced upon me with the same or greater energy a drunk horny man would use on an unsuspecting wife. She kissed and made love to me until I no longer screemed but mourned.
She continued to grind her way until I had that primitive spasmic rhythmic movement of my hips; until I woke up to see my soiled underwears.
The spasmic movement was very familiar; the face even more familiar.
She took the countenance of one of those faces I once wanked to as a youth.
So that when pastor Okon told me I had slept with a female demon in my bedroom, I knew I had CREATED HER MYSELF in my youthful bedroom.
All images are from Google and can be reused.