moi!

moi!

Sunday, November 30, 2008

A Beast In Disguise

WARNING-extremely long but worth the read....enjoy


“Tokunbo, do you really think he is the right guy for me?” I said. “Sheena, you know you have to forget the past and at least give him a chance.” “I don’t know toks, I really don’t know. I will sleep on it and give you a feed back in the morning. Let me go to bed now, I have a long day at work tomorrow. I will talk to you after work tomorrow.” “Ok Sheena, sleep well. Good night.” After the long conversation I had with tokunbo about this special guy I was up for a couple of minutes thinking about my future, tried to see if there would be a future between this guy and I. I will give it a try but I have been hurt so many times I don’t want that again…I slept off while wondering and pondering about this guy.
It was dawn before I knew it. I woke up smiling and as always I stood outside on the patio for a little fresh air before my usual morning jug. I went jugging and said hello to my neighbors while at it. As I turned on my iPod, the song that started playing was “we belong together” by Mariah Carey. Immediately I changed the song to something to pump me up. After a 2 mile jug, I came back to my humble abode to get ready for work. As usual, took a shower for about 10 minutes, got dressed and stepped out till night.
“Miss Sheena what would you like for me to get you and oh by the way, you also have a couple of missed calls from Dr James and this man who says his name is Ishmael also one from fluid entertainment. He says you should call him back ASAP.” Thank you Carol, I would like a cup of my usual signature hot chocolate from Starbucks and I didn’t forget about my meeting and I will give all those people a call back as soon as I can. “Anything else for you ma’am?” No Carol that will be all.
A guy walked into my office, he was a co-worker. “Do you not have manners or have you no common sense to see that the door was shut which implies knock before you enter?” I said. “That’s not a good way to start the morning you know, you should have at least said good morning to me before going off one me” Justin said, and who the hell are you to come into my office without knocking and stupid enough to think I would greet them after such rudeness being displayed. “It’s not even that serious Sheena, all I want to do is talk to you.” Clearly I don’t want to talk to you so please leave my office. At the top of his voice, “That’s the attitude that is keeping men away from you, you think the whole world of yourself, you have no patience for no one, why do you think you don’t have a man or rather why do you think men run away from you, all I wanted to do was have a simple conversation with you but there you go getting rude.” “You have no rights to come into my office uninvited, you have no rights to yell at me, you don’t know anything about me so please get the hell out of my office before I call security on you.” “Fine I’ll leave your office but I will leave with this brief statement, that attitude of yours will get you nowhere.” “Just get out of my office; I don’t want to ever see you again.”
I thought to myself, what nonsense, how rude, what attitude is he talking about? I don’t have any mean attitude, at least I think so. I left the issue there and continued with my daily work. While on hold with fluid entertainment over the phone, what Justin said earlier about my attitude kept popping into my head in different forms like,” you will have no man”,” your attitude is whack”…hello? Hello? Hello? This is DJ smooth of Fluid Entertainment, is anyone there? “Oh sorry, this is Sheena with Kini Big Deal Entertainment, I got a call from you all but I was unable to get the message hence my call back. Oh yes, I remember calling to speak with you in person, I was thinking about a collaboration with your agency you know. “No I don’t know, I’m listening.” Ok it’s like this since you all host parties and sign up-coming artist onto your label and also since you all happen to be the richest music entertainment industry in the whole of East America, we thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to collaborate with you all when you have parties and things like that. The interest will be split 60/40, although negotiable.” Do you see where I am coming from? “No I don’t see where you are coming. If you truly want to collaborate with my company, then you are going to have to come up to me with a good itinerary stating all the things you want, with concrete reasons backing them up and also suggest you get a lawyer just incase I consider what you have just said. Actually I really cant consider what you just said because it sounds like a mess to me, so in case you haven’t heard, whenever you want to come up to me to make a proposal, the first step you might want to consider is making an appointment with my personal assistant. I have nothing more to say, so thank you for your effort and try again next time. Have a good day! And immediately I hung up the phone. I thought to myself again, “what foolish way to come up with a proposal. I wonder what people think about these days, it just makes no kind of sense. A loud hiss followed after that statement! As usual, I continued with my daily work and while doing this, I drifted off again into an entire world of thoughts. Only this time, the thoughts I had where about this guy tokunbo and I were talking about the night before. “Should I brush him off my shoulder? Should I give him a chance? Should I bring myself back to earth? Am I really too feisty and stern? Was Justin right when he said men run away from me? Armani doesn’t run away from me, he is trying to get to know me better but I don’t know why I keep pushing him away, maybe I should just give him a chance.” Just then, I heard a knock on my door. “Who is it? Come in” It was Armani, I couldn’t believe it, I wasn’t expecting him and more so I was just thinking about him. “Hey there Sheena, I have knocking on your door for a minute, didn’t just want to barge in so I kept knocking, you must have zoned out not to have heard me.” I thought to myself, not only is he 6 feet tall of chocolaty goodness, he is also a fine brother with a nice body and yes he is polite. “Oh hey Armani, I wasn’t expecting you, I don’t recall setting a meeting with you.” I reached out to give him a hand shake and he returned the gesture, only that he had a bunch of flowers in his hand, lilies, and the kind I love and handed it over to me. I smiled and said thank you afterwards. “So what brings you here Armani?” “I just thought to stop by your office to see if you wanted to go get lunch or something because I just realized that we work on the same street.” “Oh that’s very nice of you Armani; sure I’d love to go to lunch with you. Just hold on, let me clear up a little bit and grab my purse and coat. A few minutes later… “I’m done clearing up, lets be on our way” I said. “After you mademoiselle…”OMG he even speaks French” I smiled and said Merci.
Over lunch we basically talked about our likes and dislikes, hobbies, what schools we went to, what we majored in and you know all the basic stuff. I was really nice to him; I wasn’t my usual saucy, feisty, spoiled brat. In fact I was proud of myself that I could go a whole lunch period without being mean to someone. He dropped me back at my job and asked me out on a second date, of course I agreed, I mean who wouldn’t want to go on a second date with a fine man like himself. The day went by so fast, I don’t know why, maybe because all I could think about was him. Immediately I got home, I called tokunbo up and told her all about how the lunch date went with Armani and I. She was very proud of me I must say, I’ve never heard her so excited...Well in ages though.
Several days, weeks and months went by and I was still with Armani. During that period of time, he asked me to be his girlfriend of which I agreed. We did almost everything together. It was like I was living the good life, he gave me everything I wanted, he told me a lot of things I wanted to hear. He was just very good to me. I had feelings attached to him, I had what some people call Love for him. The feeling was so great; I had never felt such way before. One Saturday morning, Armani called me and said I should meet him at the park and I asked what for, he said just come and he hung up immediately. I had mixed feelings about the impromptu meeting. I got dressed and went straight to the park without hesitation. As I walked into the park through the park entrance, I noticed the rose petals on the floor and a note by d gate of the park that said “follow the rose petals.” It was a little spooky but I did it anyways. As I approached the water falls, I noticed a bird poodle on the side and further down was a platform. Placed on this platform was a box that read “open me.” As I opened the box, I heard a soothing melody playing in the background; I turned to my side and saw no one. Inside the box was a princess cut pink diamond ring that must have cost a fortune. I screamed when I saw this, then all of a sudden I heard someone talking, I turned my back and saw Armani, he was on one knee and he said to me “ Sheena, these past few months have been wonderful, I have come to understand you and how you operate, I know this might seem a little too sudden and I know you weren’t expecting this, but baby I want you to be my wife, my life, the one I would come home to every night, the one I would wake up beside every morning, the light of my life, the angel in my dreams, my rock, my princess, my everything, please accept this proposal.” He held my hand and the ring in d other…He said “baby, I cannot put this ring on you if you don’t give me a response.” Tears rolled out of my eyes, I had never experienced such in my entire life, I didn’t think I would see this day, with a little hesitation, I said yes I will be your wife. He slipped the ring into my finger right after that, he stood up and gave me a big hug and a kiss followed after. He cleaned my tears with his hands and said “from this day onwards, I’m here for you to cry all you want, I will be your rock, I will be your shoulder to lean on, I will be your friend, I will be your best friend, trust me and I will never break your heart.” I sniffed a little bit and smiled and the rest was history.
Immediately, he asked me to move in with him but I refused. He convinced me later on to move in with him, he had good reasons to back the notion up so I agreed. After a month I moved in with him, and everything started changing from then onwards.
One morning, I woke up and Armani wasn’t beside me, so I walked out of the room and found the house clean, breakfast made and all that in a basket. I was pretty surprised, I looked for Armani and he wasn’t there, so I just ate a little breakfast, took a shower and stepped out of the house to work. When I got outside, I found my Benz convertible sparkling clean, Armani had detailed my car. I went into the car and it smelled very good. I called him but he didn’t pick up his phone, I sent him a text when I got to work but I got no response. After the day was over, I went home and found Armani sitting down on the couch. He looked very furious and angry, so I walked over to him knelt down in front of him to ask what the problem was. Immediately, he pushed me to the side and stood up with force. I was so shocked, he yelled at me saying he did all those things he had done in the morning for me and I couldn’t even utter a word of “thanks”. I told him that I had sent him a text message and called him but I didn’t get a response. I stood up and said “baby, I know you cannot be getting upset ‘cause of something as little as this.” He pushed me real hard this time, I fell on my wrist and he said “You have no rights to tell me whether or not to get angry at whatever.” I hurled and said, “Armani you hurt me, my wrist hurts, I felt like I had broken a bone or something, “ take me to the emergency room please.” He said “Take yourself to the emergency room, I only pushed you there is no way you could have broken a bone.” I stood up and stormed out of the house and went straight to the hospital. They had to perform a surgery on my hand as I had broken my wrist.
Before I knew it was morning and as I looked at my hand I saw a cast on it and I cried deeply. I called for the nurse to call my husband to be and he came down as soon as he heard what happened. He came into my sick room and asked if I was ok, I didn’t utter a word to him… He knelt down and apologized and pleaded. He said someone had annoyed him at work the day before and I was the prey he took it all out on. I accepted his apology but I didn’t tell him that I did because I was enjoying seeing him plead. I was discharged from the hospital the next day and ever since that incident happened, Armani had been very good to me; he would drive me to work, make diner and breakfast, and do the laundry and all other stuff that required using the hands.
After a couple of months, we started planning our wedding and our future, if we wanted to have kids and so on. We started sending out invitations and making our guest list and all that just so that the wedding didn’t flop. We arranged for a comedian and all other fun stuff, we arranged for two different limos and we just made sure every thing was on point for the wedding. Obviously we hired a wedding planner, we weren’t the cheap ass couple, well Armani is kind of cheap but we managed to plan the wedding.
A year later we were married and I was pregnant. You know how it feels when you just get married and you think all is good and then you get pregnant and you still think all is good. Well mine was a mixture of both good and bad feelings. I was having silly thoughts about my marriage, but as my carefree side took over me, I didn’t care, I overlooked the thoughts. I was happily married to Armani for the first few months but after that I felt like I was living in hell. Every little misunderstanding we had, Armani would beat me knowing fully well that I was carrying his baby or should I say babies. I had a miscarriage after the first encounter with Armani’s beating the first time, I was pregnant with twins and I lost them. I had made up my mind that I would never forgive him as long as I lived but when you have God in your life, you just have to let go of some certain things and let him in. I forgave Armani and I got pregnant again, this time it wasn’t with twins. During this period of time while I was pregnant, I went through a lot of things with Armani. Armani would just come home from work after a bad day and start blowing curses on my head, throwing tantrums at me for no just cause. I called the police on him so many times but they did nothing. I thought about what I was doing wrong, I figured Armani was just depressed because I make more money than him. Armani graduated with Philosophy as his major and I graduated with Business Administration as my major and biochemistry as my minor which makes me more flexible to both the sciences and the business. He worked as a bill collector and I worked as the C.E.O of Kini Big Deal entertainment so the difference was very clear. All this didn’t bother me, because we still lived in a huge house with 5 bedrooms and didn’t really have problems with paying bills.
It was a Saturday morning, Armani wanted to go out and I needed him to drive me somewhere because I had really become heavy, I was 7 months then so I got really tired very easily. I begged Armani the night before and he said he would take me there and pick me up when I was done. So as Armani was about to leave the house, I said Armani, “aren’t you going to take me to that place” and Armani said “woman find your own ride I am not your chauffeur.” I walked up to him and said “baby but you promised”, he looked at me and said “look woman I don’t have your time right now” and he pushed me away. I fell down on my gluts and hurled a little bit, he didn’t even look back at me. With the anger and rage in me I stood up and screamed, I picked up one of my heeled shoes and threw it at him. The heel of the shoe hit him right in the middle of his head, with immediate effect he turned and slapped my face. I screamed and slapped him right back and held on to his shirt. I looked him in the eyes while crying and said “I have had enough of your bull shit, I cannot take it anymore, I have had to put up with you for too long, you would take your anger out on me and I would keep quiet. You mistook my silence for weakness; Armani let me tell you something…” He slapped my hand of his shirt and said “Never in your life hold me by my shirt…” I interrupted and screamed “HOW DARE YOU? HOW DARE YOU TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ME?” Then I reduced my voice and said “If you ever place a finger on me again, I swear between God and man, you will never see peace, you will never see the light of day. What did I do to you? I have stayed faithful, you broke my hand remember and it wasn’t hard for me to forgive you, you made me have a miscarriage also remember and I still forgave you, what more do you want?” He ran upstairs and picked up a belt and immediately he started flogging me with it. As he flogged me with it he said “I’m not a mad man if that’s what you are thinking, you have no respect for me, you think because you are pregnant, you can do whatever you like.” I stood up and ran to the kitchen and grabbed a knife and I said “Armani if that belt should touch me, I swear down, I will stab you to death and I don’t mind going to prison for this, my God in heaven see’s what you are doing to me, you are fighting me for no just cause, I have never cheated on you, yet I see the text messages and phone calls from all those sluts you get. You think I’m crazy, you think I don’t know what I am doing, you cheat on me and I still cook for you, I still welcome you when you come back home with a hug even though you push me away, I still pay the bills when you have no money, I still buy things for you, I still give you everything you want and need and this is how you pay me? I have done nothing but love you ever since we started talking, I let you into my life knowing the kind of person I am and this is how you are going to pay me. As a matter of fact I want you out of my house immediately, I don’t want to ever see you again, because if this is what marriage is, I don’t want to be involved, I will give birth to my child in peace and take good care of him because fathers like you are hopeless, I’d rather let him be fatherless than have a father like you.” Armani walked up to me and as he leaned close to my ear, he uttered a few words; he said “you think you are tough, let us see who has the last laugh by the time I’m done with you.” He started hitting me again with his belt and without hesitation, I stabbed him on his hand with the knife in my hand and immediately he fell to the ground, he wanted to get up to hit me again, this time I closed my eyes and stabbed him in his stomach and dropped the knife right beside him. My kitchen was bloody and so were my hands after touching him, my eyes were red and baggy because I had suffered in the hands of Armani. I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do but I had to do it. I ran to the phone and called 911; they came in a hurry and rushed Armani to the hospital.
After a couple of hours, Armani died. I cried not because I killed him, but because I let myself go to a man that was not up for it. I thought he was worthy to be called a man but little did I know that he was a beast in disguise, he wore a mask to cover up the other side of him. I fell stupidly for Armani and it’s never going to happen again. I told myself that I would never get married to any man ever again. Two months later, my son was born and a funny thing is that I named my son Armani.
20 years later, here I am, my son is 20 years old, he is in college, and he is doing very great. Sitting here in this couch reminds me about Armani, anytime I reflect back to what had happened the other night, I would shed a tear and the anger and rage would just build up. A true beast he was in disguise!

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