QUEEN OF THE STREETS - A story of betrayal, sex, lust, and murder. (Part Two)

August 11,2002.
You'd woken petrified from being blinded by a light flashed into your eyes by an austere looking-man dressed like some chap from the turn of the previous century. You instinctively built a dam over your eyes with you fingers 'til the man got the message and redirected the torch to your feet. Your eyes met this greyish darkness which blurred every detail of the horizon before you. Hanging inside of you was this unfathomable feeling of vertigo.
"Small girl, wetin bring you come outside my shop?" he spoke in a whisper that left you unnerved, this austere-looking man, "you be winch?"
Your lips had parted, wrestling with your tongue to word thoughts you couldn't string together whilst you sliced the darkness with your eyes - a vain attempt to recollect events from the environment. But it wasn't Aunty Anita's pile of huge boxes stuffed mostly with clothes she'd forgotten the colour of your eyes had met, nor the sight of her flabby folds of cellulite hanging from her sides with Uncle Emeka's hand lodged between her breast and fleshy folds.
Perhaps you must have kipped in the open like you were condemned to some times Aunty Anita locked you out so she wouldn't have to chew on her screams nights Uncle Emeka pestled her fleshy mortar silly, so you let your eyes roam the darkness, hoping to meet the familiar queue of disgruntled folks with bowels filled with faeces meant for the pit toilet. Alien! You'd looked a way more, hoping to feed your eyes with the stony faces of women who themselves fed on loathe, packed like sardines each condemned to a corner in the smoke scullerry but no - nothing familiar.
Waves of stings had torn through your slit a moment later, escorted by torn up pieces of scenes that stuck to your mind. Soon the stings made sense. Each added up to the other before them to paint a picture of Uncle Emeka sawing into you the evening before. The thing with forced sex is the pain that hangs over, a feeling not different from what hangs over in the heads of pent-up but devoted alcoholics. But it was different, this pain from the soreness, it held both flesh and soul captive.
"My name is Chi_," remembering it was too 'bush', "my name is Queen, Sir. My Aunty threw me out of her house."
"Say you do wetin?"
"Her husband raped me but she say na me want am. But I come_" you'd answered .
Austere-looking had man giggled, quite to your surprise, then inched your way, " You come like am? E mean say you go like me be that. If I do you, you go like me pass your Aunty husband sef. Make we enter shop."
The darkness had lost colour from the deep grey you first saw to an ashiness. Vehicles sped past in mad frenzy and crazy hornings, whilst women and men trudged on in silent determined steps, all efforts to beat the traffic. You could see the man clearly. He looked fifty. His head balded at the top. Grassy strands of hair long overdue for shaving sat on the sides, merging effortlessly into his sylvan beards. Another look at him brought memories of Mama's ridges when the farm was due weeding. You'd watched from a corner of your eyes how he'd opened his kiosk-of-a-shop, then felt how his hand had found a caressing place on your shoulder.
"Queen, make we go inside. I go give you place to stay and food everyday," he seemed to had borrowed Uncle Emeka's husky voice.
His hands had strayed to your breast the next second, those mounds of flesh still aching from Uncle Emeka's hard squeezes. You sunk you teeth into your lower lips. A tear seeped out of your left eye, stuck on an inertia birthed by confusion. Then you'd seen the lustful eyes of Uncle Emeka in his and that did it, enough! You'd lurched a hand his manhood's way, making sure your yanked at the throbbing hardness hard enough to leave him squealing, then merged into fading darkness in a sprint.
You would find yourself that morning of the August of 2002 in Ojuelegba - Lagos, meandering through folks whose faces had been discoloured by times of misery. There was that class of folks who took quick steps which told stories of unending struggles. Some others owned stinky bodies which gave away the truth their bodies had not seen water for days. Those were people who were either starving or struggling or homeless or hopeless or ticked all of those boxes like you did. Lagos people!
There was a second class you'd noticed. Well dressed and stuck on the world culture. Either students or workers. That class donned flashy attires, and seemed to tilt their outfits into showing off they'd escaped the first class rather than covering up. They were barely comfortable but some could afford perfumes, so they wouldn't have to deal with folks tilting their noses away as they jumped on and off danfos.
But there was yet another class of Lagos people you'd observed, those ones in wound up porsche cars whose noses weren't totured by the reeky carcasses of nocturnal animals ran over by drunk drivers. Those ones saw Lagos, they saw her men and women busying up with beams of early morning sweat drenching them, they saw the slums and everything else they only saw. But the rest felt these inconveniences. Those were the made folks , who one way or the other had escaped the sufferings of the other classes.
You'd made a choice of which class you wanted belonging to that morning looking Lagos in the eyes of a homeless and hopeless loner, and there was no going back living that dream. Lagos didn't care how you made money, just make the freaking money. Life happened. Things got bleak you sometimes wondered why Mama used to call you 'Chi' when you had no personal god seeing to your affairs. Then Lagos happened to you. So you vowed to give them what they wanted, in return for what you want. Hush, enough about You. Don't get carried away telling your story playing blind to the fact you are her.

Yes, you are her, Queen, who used to go by the name Chinyere. Queen's turned out the Queen of the Streets who disguises in a blonde wig over her hair worn long and neat in cornrows just the way Mama liked it. She'd had to go through cosmetic surgeries to alter her appearance into this half-caste no one can place from time before. Her pupils glimmer a mild green.
Over the years Queen grew in the game, into the class she dreamt those traumatic mornings done sleeping on empty stomachs and being totured by stinky armpits and reeky carcasses from fifteen years before, having gotten tired of working in a bar filled mostly by ageing alcoholics and ostensible women. The ride wasn't easy! But she now owns a house in Victoria Island, a classy boutique and a modelling Academy, plus a Range Rover and two fancy cars. Blogs and newspapers carry her charming pictures and beautiful success stories. Queen is currently on the verge of winning a week's contract meant to rake in thirty million Naira.
Somehow it eludes them still Queen is the mystery yet to be unravelled by the police - the whole of Lagos rightly put. Lagos folks just can't fathom how the August 10 of every year carries the news of wealthy men found dead in their hotel rooms, a knife buried into their ribs, the same fate Uncle Emeka had suffered, having last been seen late in the night with a still-in-shape blonde. Fifteen murders already. But it could never be our Queen, who wears cornrows 'cept the evening of every August 10 when she takes on her demon blonde wig! It made sense Mama coined 'Chi' from her birthname 'cause her personal god never lets her down.
And so we're left with her, who is sat in a lounge, on the 10th day of the August 2017, a disguised blonde with feet tapering on the floor, dark contact lenses worn over the mild green eyes, waiting for some random man whose existence bordered around his voice - a mild baritone with this familiar huskiness to it - all she knows and could place of him albeit they'd not crossed paths, just like she waits out every other year.