dial episode 63

DIAL
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Sequence 63
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And then there was the issue of the Dial List containing the dial-listed.
I sat behind my MacBook and looked at that list, and I had never been so ashamed of myself. I couldn’t believe that there had been a time where this list had been the one most-important aspect of my life, filling it without scruples and the least guilty conscience.
My eyes roved down that list…forty-six women.
Women who had not meant anything to me, except perhaps the last two, Akos and Dede, whose association with me had been the pivotal fulcrum that had eventually brought a certain Holy Man into my life, and ended with me looking at the same list with a mixture of shame, remorse and sheer helplessness.
There were some women on that list that I had not seen for a considerable length of time. I knew of three – including my own grandmother and Akos – who were dead. There were some I had continued to see, and there were some I had just made love to and discarded. There were some I knew had been emotionally wrecked by the way I had dumped them.
I knew, without a shred of doubt, that there were women on that list that had nothing but sheer hatred for me, hatred that had festered and become cancerous, as destructive as it was potent.
So I selected the list without the title, pasted it on a new word document page, and then I printed it out. I then went to my desktop, selected the HONEYZ folder that contained the Dial List, and then I deleted it.
I deleted it from the recycle bin too, and then I sat down with the hardcopy and my phone. Slowly, I put an ‘x’ against the names of those who were dead, and ticked off those who were alive and whose numbers I still had.
And then my quest for redemption began.
As I searched fervently for my love, Abena Adobea, I personally called on the women on that sheet of paper, those that I could locate. It was a journey that was marked mostly by pain as I saw, from a different perspective, the lives I had touched in such negative ways.
To me they had just been pawns, embodiments of flesh that were dispensable and useless. I had lied my way to their hearts, flaunting my good looks and money, and dangling the irresistible bait of a humble, kind and wealthy bachelor in front of their hearts. Most of them had thought they had met that dream man, the man that had it all and yet loved them and no one else.
But, as soon as I had slaked my thirst off their bodies, they had ceased to matter, and had just become names, pictures and videos on my list.
However, approaching them from a different perspective, one of the repented sinner, I saw the results of my horrible achievements, and I was sickened at this animal that I had once been.
To some of them, asking for their forgiveness and admitting my wrongs had been the soothing balm that healed the raw pain in their hearts. Some admitted to horrible things they had planned for me, horrible prayers they had heaped on me, and some even admitted to consulting powerful fetishes just to do terrible things to me.
Some took my offer of money and request for forgiveness. And some refused the money, but cried and forgave me. There were hugs, and there were tears, and some laughter.
And then there was the other group of women that simply refused to even speak to me. They were the ones who were so hurt, so bitter, with such rancid hatred that the sight of me corroded their very souls.
They were the ones that made me spend sleepless nights.
One of them, 14. AMELIA OF KOKOMLEMLE, Head of an economic management team of a non-governmental firm, was told a visitor was waiting for her at the Visitors’ Lounge.
She came in, looking so glorious and wonderful, and then when she saw me she went berserk! She screamed, and began picking up objects in the room and throwing them at me.
The lady was so out of control that she ripped off the receptionist’s laptop and began banging it down on top of my head as if she wanted to splatter my brains on the wall. In the end her seniors had to hold her. Each time I opened my mouth to speak she just screamed shrilly and tried to get free from them and gouge out my eyes. In the end, I was told to leave, and I left, shouting ‘Amy, I’m sorry, please forgive me’ as she screamed in a demented way at me.
Amelia…
Yeah, she had a boyfriend, a nice young Christian guy, yeah, when I met her. She broke off with her fiancé, returning his ring to him when she met me. I took her on a one week holiday to England and had my fill with her, and then I brought her back to Ghana and left for Paris, and that was the last time I saw her. Her fiancé ended up marrying her own cousin.
Another one, 33. CONNIE CURVY, was older and had been married at the time I saw her. She owned a great supermarket, and the day I saw her incredibly curvy body with that super ass, I had lusted after her and reserved a spot for her on the Dial.
My charisma and money had turned her head, and on the day it happened I had been in her house. She had begged me not to make her sin on her matrimonial bed, saying we should seek a hotel. At that time, I had been a different Yao Biko, and the prospect of having such a sweet, curvy body on her own bed had been too sweet to resist.
We had had incredible sex right on the bed she shared with her husband. In the midst of the final act of lust, her elderly husband had walked in and caught her engorging her throat with my sausage, and the man had clutched his heart and simply crashed to the floor.
Suffered a massive heart attack, and couldn’t walk for three years, or so I had heard. I had gotten dressed and rushed him to the hospital with a weeping Connie by my side. I wrote a cheque for his medical expenses, and then left, never to see her again.
So I went to Connie’s supermarket to render my apology and ask her for forgiveness. I had been shocked by the sight of her. I hadn’t seen her in about three years, but her rate of depreciation was horrible to behold. She was prematurely grey-haired, and her incredible curves had become sadly saggy. Her store wasn’t as prosperous-looking as it once did. It was being staffed now by her two daughters, I saw.
What broke my heart was the sight of the old man sitting in a wheelchair by the counter of the store, his left hand canted upward, one side of his mouth slouched, an obvious stroke-patient. It struck me then, that the man had never regained his health after witnessing his wife cheating on him.
I stood looking down at the man, who appeared to be sleeping, twisted awkwardly in the wheelchair, and tears fell down my face silently.
I had sinned…dear God, I had sinned so badly!
The next moment I felt a heavy thud in my forehead, and I crashed down heavily on the floor.
I saw in a daze, as blood streamed down my hairline, that Connie was standing above me with a huge metallic disc in her hand, which she had obviously used to hammer my head as I was looking down at her husband.
Her children were holding her, trying to wrestle the metal from her hand. She was screaming, and I knew that if I didn’t get out, she might probably kill me with that thing because I was too dazed to defend myself. I crawled painfully to the entrance of the store. People were gathering, and some had their cameras out.
As I got to my feet a man raced toward me with huge cement brick in his hand, ready to crush my head.
“Thief, thief!” he was screaming.
Obviously, seeing Connie attacking me, he thought I was a thief. My blood ran cold. In this part of the world thieves usually received instant lynching before the police arrived, and this situation could escalate rather quickly.
I spun away and smashed a fist into the man’s jaw, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes.
Other young guys rushed toward me, and I was beginning to get desperate, but Connie’s daughter appeared and shouted at them to let me be because I wasn’t a thief.
I shambled dazedly to my car, and then got my cheque book out of the briefcase. I had written a cheque meant for Connie, but seeing the state of her shop, and how sick her husband was, and how she had aged so much in such a short time, I knew she was in need of more.
And so I wrote another cheque, the amount four times what I had wanted to give her, and then I went back to the shop. People were still milling around as I stood in the entrance with matted blood in my hairline, and traces of tears in my eyes. Connie saw me, and she began to rant with tears raining down her face, her finger pointed at me.
“Yao Biko, the gods will punish you! You will rot before you die, Yao Biko! I will never ever forgive you, devil boy like you! Set a foot here and I’ll cut off your head, Yao Biko! Molten lave will rain down on your head, and thunder will strike you dead!”
I sighed deeply as her daughter approached me with a desperate look in her eyes.
“Sir, could you leave and come back later?” she asked miserably. “My mother is so upset! What did you do to her to make her hate you like this?”
Without a word I handed her the cheque. She glanced down at it, and her eyes opened wide with shock, and then she hugged me and thanked me. I asked her to say sorry to her parents for me, and then I returned home.
There were a few of such cases, but mostly I was forgiven, and I found a sense of freedom and a lightness on my heart.
But of Abena Adobea, I heard no good news, and my desperation and pain soon reached unbearable heights. We went to church, me and my two mothers, and we fasted for a breakthrough.
And then, one Saturday afternoon, the sweet tones of the doorbell chimed, and I activated the video. Standing patiently outside was Mr. Kwesi Kumankuma Kyenkyenhene Ketiampongkese Kupualorkpokpo, the Holy Man of Wowo!
I began to laugh and promptly buzzed him in, and as the two women came in, drawn by my wild laughter, I raced past them to the entrance and embraced the man hard.
“Hey, stop that bullcrap!” he said through his chuckles. “Hello, son. I missed you.”
“Missed you too, old man,” I said as we went upstairs. “Been thinking of coming over lately, but I still haven’t found Abena Adobea and I wanted to sort that out first. But I can’t believe this. You rang the doorbell?”
He chuckled again.
“My powers of scaring people are useless against true Christians, son,” he said when we entered the living-room, and he promptly pulled a green apple out of the air and proceeded to bite into it.
Maame Ntiriwaa embraced him, and I introduced my mother to him.
“Can I serve you some lunch?” my mother asked after the Holy Man was seated.
“Oh, yes,” he said as he looked at the television. “Bring me some of that sweet plantain and kontomire stew. Yao, see if you can find some Tom and Jerry cartoons for me to watch.”
“How did you know we cooked that?” my mother asked, aghast, and then Maame Ntiriwaa burst out laughing, and I joined in.
And later, whilst he was eating and watching cartoons, I asked if he came to visit me.
“Visit you, yes, and also to visit a bad young doctor and put a curse on him,” he said and smiled.
I laughed uproariously at that, so hard that I couldn’t stop laughing for a while.
“What’s wrong with you?” my mother asked with some concern even as the Holy Man and Maame Ntiriwaa laughed too.
“He’s remembering what happened when I cursed him,” the Holy Man said.
“This doctor, what did he do?” I asked amidst chuckles. “Oh, he’s so dead!”
“He’s been drugging young ladies that visit him, and sleeping with them without their consent,” the Holy Man said sadly. “He just made a young Christian girl who was going to get married soon pregnant. She didn’t know how she got pregnant, and she tried to commit suicide because her fiancé left her.”
“Oh, that’s horrible!” my mother said, her face horrified.
“You’re going to make him grow old too?” I asked, beginning to laugh again.
“I visited the girl before coming here, and cheered her up,” the Holy Man said as he put a piece of plantain into his mouth. “She’ll be okay. This doctor, hmm, old? I don’t think so. At first I wanted him to be fat, and then thin, but now…I think I’m going to make him grow in reverse, you know. He will grow younger and shorter until he becomes a small boy, then he’ll change.”
I guffawed with laughter, unable to stop myself.
And then, the Holy Man shut me up violently!
Oh, he didn’t hit me, no, and he didn’t shout at me. He just casually looked at me.
“You said you’re looking for Abena Adobea?” he asked softly even as I was laughing, and I nodded.
“Okay,” the Holy Man said, lifted his left hand, and simply pulled out a lovely white invitation card from the air, and then handed it to me. “You’ll find her right there.”
I took the invitation card, and then violently I stopped laughing as I saw what was printed on it:
Solemnization of Marriage
Asamoah Adobah Weds Abena Adobea
Saturday, 7 April, 2018
Asempa Bethel Church, Kotobabi
1.00 p.m. prompt.
That was how violently I stopped laughing as my dazed eyes went to the beautiful expensive clock on my wall.
It was 2.p.m.
Oh, dear, oh, dear