adminShort Story by Cuthbert Mavheko
WHEN I arrived at Mercy’s house on that tragic Friday morning, I found the front door wide open. As I shuffled into the sitting room, the strong smell of blood wafted into my nostrils and a sense of alarm began to sting my nerves. I called out: “Mercy! Mercy!” A deathly silence greeted me and a chill began to wrap itself around my heart as I crept into the bedroom. And then I stiffened and my whole body turned to ice. Mercy lay on her back in a pool of blood on the floor. There was a deep wound in her throat and blood gushed out in a torrent. I stood at the door, staring at her in horrified disbelief, my breath suddenly coming out in great sobbing gasps.
My eyes rested on a blood-caked knife on a coffee table. I absent-mindedly picked it up, just then two armed police officers burst into the room.
“Drop the knife!” One of them bawled, threateningly. They assailed me with batons, then handcuffed me and hauled me to Luveve Police Station on allegations of murder. A few days later, I was put on trial.
“Do you plead guilty or not guilty to murder, Sam?” the judge boomed.
“I am not guilty, Your Worship,” I retorted.
“But the police found you in the deceased’s house with the murder weapon in your own hand around the time that she was murdered and forensic experts have established that the fingerprints on the murder weapon are yours. This proves that it’s you who murdered . . .” At that moment, the whirlwind of events that finally led to Mercy’s death began to unfold in my mind.
It all began on a hot November night in 2012.The clock on the dashboard of the commuter omnibus bore testimony to the fact that the time was 11.45pm when I dropped the last commuter at Mzilikazi Post Office. I made a u-turn at the robot-controlled intersection and the kombi was soon streaking along Luveve Road like a bullet. As the kombi streaked past Mpopoma High School, a woman suddenly floated into view, flagging down a lift. I decelerated, pulled up on the side of the road and switched on the interior light of the kombi. The young woman flounced to the kombi and cooed: “Can you please give me a lift, I am going to Magwegwe North.”
“Get into the car sister,” I said, leaning sideways to open the door for her. A deliciously intoxicating scent of perfume wafted into my nostrils as the young woman slid into the kombi.
“Oh, thank you so much,” she sang with a voice that dripped with honey. She was a breathtakingly lovely, voluptuous young woman who glowed with life and vitality. She was about 20 and was attired in a sky-blue dress that clung to her curveous figure as if she was born with it. The features under that plain dress, though adequately covered, would not spare my thoughts from straying into the wildest of erotic adventures. The twinkle in her dark, watery eyes mesmerised me for a moment and I could only gape at her like a bush buck caught up in the hypnotic spell of a python. In my eyes she looked like an angel that had just come down from heaven.
As I released the handbrake, my hand momentarily brushed against her thigh and a voluptuous thrill shot up through my body, leaving me dazed and slightly out of breath. It was like I had come into contact with a mild electric current. Silence reigned supreme in the kombi for what, to me, appeared like an eternity of time as I searched for the right words to start a conversation with her. When I finally found my voice, it did not sound like my own. The voice was hoarse and strained like that of someone who is drowning. “Eh . . . eh . . . I . . . I . . . believe we have met before, sister,” I stuttered, feeling my heart pound like a drum. For a moment the young woman’s eyes fixed momentarily on my own, then she smiled, exposing a set of even teeth that were as white as a fresh fall of snow.
“Where exactly did we meet?” the lady of angelic beauty had asked. I tapped nervously on the steering wheel with my right hand as I sought an answer to her question. I half-turned to look at her, making the vehicle swerve.” I . . . I . . . cannot remember exactly where, I . . . eh . . . your face looks familiar to me,” I lied, my heart thumping with excitement. A touch of hidden amusement made the young woman’s eyes twinkle; she took a deep breath and shot another question at me: “Did we talk when we met?” I scratched the side of my head with my hand. This was a difficult question to which I did not have a ready answer. Despite this, however, I was encouraged by the warm and friendly tone that punctuated each word that she uttered.
“I . . . I . . . eh my name is Sam and what’s yours, angel-face?” I said, evading her question. A dazzling smile spread across the young woman’s face. She fished a small mirror out of her handbag and gave her reflection a brief glance. “Mine is Mercy,” she said. During the ensuing verbal exchange, she told me that she was a teacher at Mpopoma High School. When we reached Magwegwe North, she gave me her phone number and nipped out of the car. When I got home, a little later, I flipped onto the bed; all my thoughts were on Mercy. What an impact she had made on me! I had not looked at any other woman since I caught my ex-wife red-handed in bed with my own brother on our wedding day. I had vowed then not to have anything to do with women again, until this angel called Mercy waltzed into my life. The next day I visited her at her workplace and this marked the genesis of our love affair. Six months down the line, we decided to be joined in holy wedlock.
However, Mercy’s father vehemently objected to the wedding. “My daughter is a High School teacher and I am not permitting her to wed an illiterate kombi driver!” he bellowed with rage when we broke the news of the wedding to him. Despite this, however, we decided to go ahead with the wedding. The tragic irony is that when I went to Mercy’s house on the eve of our wedding, I found her dead. I was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. As I pen this story I am at Khami Maximum Prison, awaiting the hangman’s noose for a crime that I did not commit. I have written this story to tell the world what really happened on that fateful day, hoping that I will be exonerated before I am exiled permanently from this planet.
Online Reporter