Soul Mate 2

My sister Chikerenma has always been a witch. Not because she possesed magical or evil powers.  No.

Her powers lie in her creativity for evil, her wild imagination that always thinks up the greatest horror to my small mind.

It wasn't just about snatching all my snacks and money when our parents eyes were turned, it was the taunting, the cruelty in her words and eyes, the power in her punishing hands.

You see, sometimes she could be a psycho. Most days, she would ignore me and treat me like vermin. Other days, she would give me a piece of her attention, talking and laughing as if we were fast friends. I never knew what to expect from her, which made her cruel moments worse.

I could not reconcile the girl who would take me to the shops on the street to buy me candy, the girl who would spend hours gisting about her friends and boys with me, I could not reconcile that girl with the one who would clearly push me into the middle of a busy highway, the one who would use a scissors to cut off lumps of my hair while i slept.

I could not understand her. At my age then, she was a mystery, one I could not understand at the time.

The sad part is,  I was the only one who saw this side of her, the only one who saw that she was unhinged. Our parents always regarded her as their sweet little girl and she looked it. Chikerenma has always been pretty, the type of pretty that stared you right in your face.  You can't help but notice her oval thin face, her perfectly aligned brows, those straightlined nose and her rose bud lips. She has always been the pretty one in the family.

And she had the nice manners to go with it. She could smile and charm anybody, even the harshest of teachers. She was pretty, social and popular.

I, was the misunderstood one. The one who did not really understand people or how to relate with them. I had few friends, mostly seatmates and they never came over. They also admired Chikerenma, and whenever I tried to tell them about her dark side, they looked at me as if I had grown horns.

It was a while before I understood that Chikerenma was only charismatic. And I managed to live with her despite it all, until the day it all changed, the day I realised how much she hated me.

Our parents had traveled to Delta state, for the burial of a family friend. At the time, Ochuko my cousin was staying with us for holidays. Ochuko is the only son of my mother's sister and he is quite a handful. I never got the full story but I think his parents sent him over because of a scandal in his school. It was a normal thing because Ochuko was a bad boy, the kind who smokes at night when my parents were asleep, who steals my fathers alcohol, who brings girls over and locks me in my room so I would not disturb.

In a way, I guess my parents were a bit uneasy about leaving us alone even though Chikerenma at the time had just written JAMB. Somehow, they must have sensed how dark things would get. They made Chikerenma promise to look out for me, to never leave me alone and to sleep in my room with me at night. I was fourteen at the time, and pretty scared of the dark.

The moment they left on the trip, Ochuko and Chikerenma locked me in my room and proceeded to throw a party. Soon, the house was full of people while music blasted from our speakers in the parlor. I peeked from the keyhole, trying to hold in my bladder that was screaming for relief. I could make out shapes of Chikerenma's friends holding red plastic cups and smoking.

I fell asleep. It was past midnight when I heard the key in my room turn and somebody staggered in, quite drunk. At first, I thought it was Chikerenma coming to sleep over.

But the hands that grabbed my legs were too strong and callused. Ochuko.

He didn't say a word. Just dragged me towards him, ignored my yell of surprise before promptly covering my mouth and my nose with his big hands. Till date, it remains the most painful experience of my life.

But worse than the pain was the fact that I could not breathe through it all. I struggled and eventually passed out.

When I woke, Chikerenma was poking at me with a stick, standing far away as if afraid to be contaminated. Ochuko was standing beside her, visibly shaking with fear.

She turned to him as she saw that I was awake. "Stop shaking like a harmattan leaf. She is not dead. I told you to be gentle... "

And they left.

That moment sealed it.

The hatred I felt for her was alive and breathing, a black dragon that spewed forth smoke from its nostrils and fire from its mouth.

I had never felt such intensity, such capacity for hatred before. That was when I stopped speaking to my sister except the occasional greeting when our parents were around.

By the time I grew boobs, I realised I had a weapon. I knew how to make men want me, I knew how to walk, to talk and get men to do what I wanted.

So I began to steal Chikerenma's boyfriends. I gloried in the fact that she could not confront me about it.

Why?

I not only grew boobs but muscles.  And lots of male friends. The first boyfriend of hers I slept with, she came to confront me.  We fought and both received some blows. But I was not done, I wanted her to know that I was no longer that little girl she could terrorise anymore. I wanted her to know that what she had, I also had same and I knew how to use it more than she does.

So I got two of my male friends to accost her and beat her up. I could have had them rape her but something held me back. Weakness I think.

Chikerenma is the reason I am messed up, Chikerenma is responsible for every pain, every agony I have ever felt in this life.

Even though I have hardly given her any thought since we got into different universities, I realise that the hatred is real.

I have found one man that I love. She won't keep me from taking him.

Wish me luck, not that I need it.