Christopher
Bonn, Germany

Several filthy tables stood against the back wall, grouped around a half-open door. Several dirty sailors and factory workers in clothes stay there, together with a couple of filthy women with very offensive low-cut dresses, playing cards, and sometimes joining in the even filthier song played by a dirty piano player to my left.

To my right, there is a whole filthy bar with large, dirty barrels behind it, and a bartender whose lateness and filth could easily compete with his barrels.

Several people were seated at the bar. They too; surprise, surprise- were filthy and staring into filthy tankards. Only a few who didn't have filthy steins to drink out of were staring in the direction of women. But I bet their thoughts were dirty.

What am I doing in this locale of filthiness? Why am I drinking filthy liquor from a steel cup in my discrete place at the filthy warehouse? I know why but at that moment, I choose to have no idea. All I stick to is the fact that I need it. Badly.

Yemisi has never been that furious with me in all our years of marriage, and I didn't plan on making her mad at me. It was clear that I dealt with everything the wrong way. I lied to her and acted as though nothing had happened. I left her to hurt for an entire week when I should have communicated with her. Even when I had the chance to tell the truth, I gaslighted her.  I didn't know how to deal with the situation.

I was scared. Very scared.

My betrothal with the lady I have never met was a result of hazardous circumstances. It was more of a "desperate times call for desperate measures" arrangement.

It had to happen, and I saw it as nothing when I was a lot younger because I trusted my mum to get the issue resolved and bring an end to the betrothal engagement when the entire ordeal was over. I forgot about it while growing up because my mother never mentioned it to me.

I thought everything was okay.

Little did I know that giving my love to Yemisi had nothing on the existing betrothal engagement. The agreement stood regardless. My mother never resolved the issue. It began to feel like she set it all up to have me trapped, and now getting out of that bait seems impossible.

What's worse is I'm in this damn foreign country with people who speak a language so weird that it sounds like an established, subtle form of tongue-twisting.

Why so?

I have to be here, of course! Thanks to this tyrant called "business" that gives zero hoots about your life struggles. It's either you willingly give the business your attention or business forces you to give it attention, and in most cases, the latter usually turns out to be fatal.

I know I can't stay back to plead for my wife's forgiveness. It would be a futile move. She's vexed at me. Perhaps if I call her on the phone, she'd be calm enough to talk with me.

'... I won't miss you. I promise you.'

The hope that had risen and crashed within my gut just a second ago makes my head ache so bad that I reach for the third bottle of vodka on my table, doing my best to empty its contents on the steel cup. I hope that this bottle won't be sly as the other two bottles of vodka. Still, nothing is forthcoming from the third bottle of vodka as well.

"Come out, will you?" I ask the darn, obnoxious bottle, but it glares back at me like I'd just made a noxious request. What is so hard about my request that is causing the bottle to be so stubborn?

"Hey! I paid for you, so stop being stubborn and produce me some more vodka. Stop acting like every other darn vodka bottle in this alehouse. OKAY?!" I raise the bottle in a slanting position once more, and it rattles noisily with the empty steel cup.

The sound produces a reverberation of even lousier metallic objects banging against each other in my head, making my head twinge to another level of pain. Still, nothing comes out of the airless bottle.

All of that noise only for you to be so darn stingy like the dead sea! Why won't you let this cup receive from you?!

I hold the stubborn, disobedient bottle in my hand, concluding that it deserves no mercy, and I release my soft grip on the weighty bottle. Then, it winces, groaning out loud with a smash on the wooden floor—the once rigid, mocking expression on its face dissolving into a cowardly shriek.

"Serves you right!"

I look around. No one seems to hear the cries of the useless vodka bottle. Even better. I get on my feet like a three-month-old baby walking for the first time, and the darn floor beneath my feet doesn't even make it any easier for me.

The sloppiness of the floor makes me wobble through the bar like a catfish on land, but somehow, I find myself moving regardless of the unpredictable waves of the floor, hoping it doesn't get more challenging for me.

The other people at the bar are not doing much except slouching. Suddenly, one of the patrons holds out his tankard, and the bartender turns his suspicious gaze from me and starts filling the mug with a glistening amber liquid. As soon as it's full, the man drinks it down in one gigantic gulp. I'm so jealous of his alcohol. I wonder why mine wouldn't listen to my commands.

Maybe vodkas aren't so reliable after all.

I need something that would help me sink deeply into oblivion. I'm tired of having my mind dribble back and forth between my wife, my mother, and the unknown lady that I am betrothed to!

"Ey, man!" I pound the bar with my fist. "I want some great rum! The fattest, rosiest rum you have! Lots of them!"

***
A hand taps my shoulder. With some difficulty, I turn around to see a strange young lady standing before me. Her face carries a smile that is not so friendly but not so severe either. It's more like a smile you give someone that tells a lame joke, but you fake a smile, so they don't feel embarrassed.

"I believe I have discovered my man," she mutters and makes an inconspicuous hand gesture. "My name is Irene Giwa, a single woman who has been in search of her betrothed lover for so many years!" her voice is dreamy all of a sudden, as though she'd just seen the northern lights.

She continues, the dreaminess in her voice now mixed with something dark. "Ever since I was betrothed to him at a very young age, I had little memory of what he looked like, but I guess that's where the potency of female intuition and instincts comes into place,"

"S-s-so what am I s-supposed to do with this irrelevant piece of information?" my head is throbbing more painfully now as some form of punishment for trying to use the part of my brain responsible for speaking. That part of my brain is not willing to be used. Still, I take one last risk. "If you are bored or in need of someone to tell the story of your life to, go to those German men over there, or the strap...stray...strippers dancing their lives a-away, "

She frowns. I don't know if it's my currently impaired vision, but she looks like a horse frowning like that.

"Well, there shall be no need for that since I'm talking to the right person, Mr. Christopher," she says, taking a seat next to me so effortlessly that it makes me furious. On a typical day, I would wonder how she got to know my name, but I am too interested in these obnoxious floors that are so unfair.

It's unfair that the floors didn't give her a hard time as they did to me. I wished she'd slipped and probably lost a tooth.

"Look, iron, "

"It's Irene." she corrects, and she leans forward, her face only inches away from mine.

I do not have your time. Pleaseeeeee ssstayyyyy away from me while I'm acting nice. I don't know you. You don't walk up to someone you don't know and begin to give them a hard time, narrating unwanted tales to them. You might get what you don't like, and I detest hurting women. I have a woman in my life that I love and miss so much, but she wouldn't even let me...

"Kisssssss her!"

Stop talking!

"Whoa! Why are you thinking so loudly?!" Her face is full of amusement as she asks the question.

"W-what do y-you mean?" Ignoring the ongoing protests my brain is making, I take another risk by daring to speak, and my head throbs again.

"You just asked me to kiss you! Talk about being bored and crazy!" There's an elated grin on her face, and her voice is suddenly shallow. She mannerlessly cups my chin with her long, slender fingers, and her face is even closer to mine, but for some reason, my hands feel so heavy. It's hard to make use of them to yank her hands away.

"No! I told you to stay away! Didn't you freaking hear that?!" My attempts to yell only result in abrupt raspiness instead. I realize that my brain is dealing with me like it promised to.

I thought I'd said what I wanted to say to her aloud and not in my head. But my brain filtered the wrong set of words, and I tell the wrong words out loud. What the hell?!

"And I wasn't referring to you when I said that! Jeez. J-just stay away, you darn daughter of Jezebel!" I force the words out of my mouth, hoping that I said them aloud now.

"No, baby. I know what you want, but you're too exhausted and angry to say it properly, and believe me when I tell you that I want it too. I searched for you for so long. I was so lonely and depressed, but I've found you now, and that is all that matters,"

"Are you...?" For a few minutes, it's hard to decipher what's giving me a hard time with trying to utter an entire sentence – whether it's my migraine or the feel of something on my lips. It's pressing itself so hard yet seems to fit perfectly. It's curtailing my breath and ability to talk. The feel of it is something like wetness from salivary glands?

Immediately after realizing that the wench is kissing me, I can't do anything to stop it. My head is now throbbing at an unbearable speed, and my eyes and hands feel heavier than a yam tuber.

My hands can't even reach for one of the rum bottles staring impatiently to be used as a tool of havoc. Still, it's just at that crucial moment that all the alcohol stored in my stomach for the night chooses to hold me captive as I am forced to succumb to the darkness rapidly seizing me.

With those lips still heavy on mine.