Preface.

Welcome to unedited Black book 3 of the Woods series.

This book can be read independently. You can read it without adventuring into 'Married to a stripper'. I'll be extremely happy if those who haven't checked that book out do so.

I hope you enjoy my works.

Love you guys much much.

Your humble author Zagzahzlau.

~••~

The Sunday night was frigid against unarmed skin in Buea--the city of legendary hospitality-- located in the southwest region of Cameroon. 

The morning's once busy roads were converted into night ghostly highways as inhabitants of the small city had sheltered their bodies beneath the coziness of their homes and heads rested upon the tenderness of their pillows, preparing for the activities of the day to come. 

Only the high leveled hormone secreted teenagers and young adults could be seen dotted into the lit-up streets in fancy pieces of dresses engulfing little to nothing of their bodies, as some sauntered while others awaited for cabs to drive them to a new world filled with them--clubs.

The less privileged could be numbered as well as they oddly established a strong attraction with the public taps of the city.

Water was a major problem in that part of the city. However, the dwellers with money-embedded homes were free of it. Victims here were the less privileged who couldn't make it up to half of five hundred thousand in the next five years.

They owned the public taps, they owned the streets, they owned the odd hours of the days and nights but never did they own predictions and time.

Somewhere behind the four and three-floored-storey buildings, deep into the stony interior of the footpaths leading to several student residential areas, stood a gated compound containing a total of seven tenants. The gated compound was made up of houses with tiny cubic sitting rooms, two minuscule bedrooms which could only accommodate a bed as furniture, and a toilet. It also had three frayed outer kitchens built of soothe painted aluminum roof sheets; it owned a three-stone fireplace and/or a sawdust-filled cylindrical tin specifically used to cook heavy meals.

In that compound lived little Nora who had readied herself to go fetch some water primarily because there wasn't a single drop at home and secondarily because she wanted to be away from the only woman whose face was enough to have her belly contents thrown out--Her step mum. 

The distance to the public tap was bearable but before leaving home she had made sure to keep every corner and item of the house sparkling to avoid being scolded by the lone woman who reciprocated her feelings of despise. 

She had cooked some food, done the laundry, ironed some dresses, and mopped the gutted concrete floor earlier that day as she always did before the cocks crowed at five-thirty am.

All which was required was to have the navy two hundred liters plastic barrel filled, eat, then, she could call that a day.

Her first step out of the house was interrupted by a monotonous voice she had never appreciated even once since she'd known the woman.

"Where to?" her stepmom queried, with both hands resting on her thick waist and an angered wrinkled, inappropriately caked-up face. She never used the right shade and her brows never matched.

Her almost six feet tall, sagged body hovered over Nora's small malnourished one. 

Martha donned a brand new white satin blouse tucked in a brand new costly looking variegated loin cloth. On her feet were a pair of thick-soled white sandals, all of which proved she had just returned from her Christian women's fellowship meeting. 

"To fetch water," Nora replied with conspicuous fear. 

Martha was a walking exemplar of 'mood swing'. Three-quarters of it had been dedicated to Nora and the remainder, to her very own husband--Nora's dad.

"Hurry up, you still have some dishes to wash and some corn to grind at the mill. It was even supposed to be done before my return. What have you been doing all day?" she posed but Nora didn't reply. "You are lucky I'm in a good mood today. Anyway, my favorite plate and saucepan are dirty, can you explain that?"

"Susan probably us-"

"Shut your filthy mouth up before I do it for you. How many times have I warned you not to put blames on any of my daughters?" Martha stretched her index finger towards Nora. "Let this be the very last time you do that," she used the finger to brutally push Nora's head. "Filthy nothing. Get out of my side, nyam!" 

The woman jellied her way into the house as she hummed a familiar church chorus.

The public tap was herded as always. Noticing she was the last of the queue, she gently placed her empty jug on the floor and sat on it, staring at the night of a million stars.

It had always been that way, people fetching water at that time--8 pm--so they won't have to worry when the morning stole the night . Especially those who would have to wake up to reach their job sites and children preparing for school.

School.

Nora had been financially deprived of high school two years ago. She understood they weren't really from a wealthy family but her dad struggled with the little he earned from working at the Buea council after her mum left for the land of the dead. 

Three years later, her dad moved on with this lady he had been courting for over a year. Just like anyone would expect, she moved in with two kids-- Susan and Rose. 

Rose was older than she was by a year while Susan was younger by a year as well. Her dad was now responsible for the two girls-- as their stepfather. Slowly but surely, she drifted out of the picture as he spent his money on fees, food, house rent, and electricity bills while his second wife owning a local store, spent hers on none other than her clothing.

Her dresses and her kids.

Nora took her gaze off the sky to focus on half a dozen youngsters left. The sound of the water hitting the bottom of an empty jug alongside the chiming of crickets, the rustling of trees, and a couple of honks from a few cabs on the highway made up the night. 

Her belly growled eliciting a head snap from one of the youngers across her.

She twisted her lip and snapped her head away from the pity-filled sight of the pair of eyes. 

She could read the girls' face despite the night as it wasn't a new book to her; it was a book which had had all her ordeal written. A book that had sold more in her residential area than Julius Caesar had sold in the part of the country she was in.

The youngsters had crowned her with all sorts of names; from Watergirl to filthy to ugly to maid to Cinderella without a prince. All of which made her wonder if they could even remember her birth name.

Finally, the tap was crowd-free. Nora rushed to deposit her twenty-liter jug beneath the recently vacant flowing tap after which she turned to its former occupant to inquire the time.

"Twenty-four minutes into ten." 

She thanked her before focusing on the descending colorless liquid glittering in the penumbra of the bugs mesmerized street lights. 

Almost ten and she hadn't even made a round out of thirteen. She heaved a heavy sigh.

The night was going to be a long one--A very long one--which she was going to navigate through with an empty tummy. 

The clock hit twelve when she made the thirteenth and final round, she dawdled to the kitchen whilst wiping her moist face with the tattered fabric clinging to her sweaty back like she had just been stamped with honey at said part. The one out of three she had ever had. She maintained the other two jealously, fluctuating them every Sunday.

She flicked the switch which instantly resulted in the kitchen illuminating. Nora scurried to the pot which hadn't moved an inch from where she had previously left it. With plate and dishing spoon in hand, and a salivating mouth, she opened the already cold pot which exhibited nothingness. Her eyes broadened, her body turned lifeless and her feet jellied. Again, just like always, she wasn't thought of. 

A cold and hard surface abruptly embedded her pale and malnourished body. The coldness wasn't a stranger to her ebony and tender skin neither was the hardness. What was strange was the massive pain that slithered through her body once it came in contact with the concrete floor. 

The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I ever had. 

She repeated several times as she slowly but surely dove into oblivion.