DEFILED AT 12.

 The story... 

 I was only 12 when my parents betrothed me to Adamu, a man in his late thirties. It was a culture and also a norm that was practiced in my small remote village at the outskirt of Adawa, in the northern part of Nigeria, early child marriage.

 Before my betrothal, I have seen some other young girls of my age being given up by their parents to older men for marriage. I was only waiting for when the shameless he goat will come for me. Fews days ago, I have eavedropped on my parents naming their price to a certain man before he could take me as a wife. 

 As a girl of my age, you wouldn't expect me to object my parents wishes and also an age long tradition of my kindred. Aside from this, I was too young to know exactly what it meant to be betrothed to a man who will eventually become your husband without your consent. 

At the age of sixteen after my secondary education, the husband my parents married me to came for me. Not to defiled the traditions, and invite the wrath of my parents, I moved in with Adamu as a wife at just sixteen. 

 A girl child who should have been under the care of her mother on her first monthly flow, was left under the watch of Adamu who was a husband to four other women, and a father to 13 kids. Some of Adamu's children were older than I was when I moved in with him. 

 Moving to a strange place with such a odd feeling was enough to make me wet by mat every night, sobbing bitterly for liberation but none came, not until Thursday 12th July at about 4pm.

 Adamu had returned from his usual trip to who knows where. Without wasting time, came to meet me in a detached hut i was living which was located at the middle of a mighty compound with many of such huts.

 The compound was traditionally fenced with bamboos around with an entrance that leads directly to a much bigger hut which was Adamu personal dwelling. 

In the last few weeks, Adamu and I were in loggerhead due to his insistence that I was consummated by my parents and as such I didn't have the right to seek for a divorce. 

 What got me even more pissed was that Adamu made sleeping in my hurt a routine and each night he will demand for the forbidden fruit, something I found very difficult to foresee it ending. 

 Finding myself in a cobweb situation at such teenage age with a man who is older than my father got me searching for answers to the doom my parents has put me in. 

 That Thursday the 12th, I needed to put an end to my weeping and nightmares regardless of the consequences. 

Like what he normally does when on a heat period, Adamu was busy lifting his way to the forbidden fruit while I was panting, screaming for help but no one could dare come to my rescue.

 It was always like that whenever he came hunting for what is in-between by legs. After much cry, I lay patiently for the best moment to end my misery.

A knife was right where plates of food were kept, close to the edge of my mat, where Adamu was battling hard to have me.

 I wanted saving myself from the claws of my predator even if it involved ending it the wrong way. 

 In the heat of the moment I seized the knife 🔪that was just within range, stabbed Adamu repeatedly to make sure the nightmare and scare was gone forever. 

 The lifeless Adamu fell off my body as I screamed with regrets of what my parents have put me into. 

 #SayNoToChildMarriage

 Inspired! 

 ~ Patrick Ekong ©️