Dial - Season 1 - Episode 112

Episode 4 years ago

Dial - Season 1 - Episode 112

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So there I was, sitting up in bed and screaming my head off.

The woman came awake and swivelled on the bed, her eyes taking in the situation with one look. The black snake’s head was under the bed, and it slithered out with mean eyes and a flat head aimed at me, its forked tongue beating angrily.

I was still sitting and shouting when the woman got off the bed, and I noticed that she was holding a long stout stick with a V-split at its end. With one swift movement she brought the stick down, the ‘V’ coming down hard on the reptile’s neck and trapping it.
The mamba coiled itself angrily around the staff!

The witch reached down and grabbed the snake’s neck, and now it unwound itself from the stick and coiled furiously around her arm.
“Yao, Yao, Yao!” she called to me desperately, and I looked at her with wide eyes.
“What?” I screamed at her.
“Stop the screaming, aaaaaba!” she said calmly. “Are you not a man?”
She dropped the stick and clamped both hands on the snake, and then she took it outside.

I got to my feet and promptly climbed on the bed, sitting and shivering as the fear and panic receded slowly, and my yammering heart slowly returned to normal.

When the squeaked door open again, I nearly jumped off the bed. She came in and shut the door again tightly, and pushed some bunched up clothes at its base. She picked up a towel and stood looking at me with fierce eyes.
“You threw the leaves away!” she said with barely concealed fury. “And yet you didn’t close the door well, leaving it with enough space for the mamba to slither through!”
I looked at her with remorse.

“I am sorry,” I whispered softly, and she shook her head at me.
She picked up a towel and wiped her wet hands.

“One bite, Yao, just one strike from that mamba and you would’ve died a painful, horrible death, and do you know what would have happened to me if that had happened?”
I nodded miserably. She was already considered a witch, and to have a stranger die in her house overnight would have made her already difficult life very horrible indeed.
“I’m sorry, Maame,” I whispered.
“You’re impulsive and you don’t listen to advice, Yao!” she said coldly. “I can’t have you here. You’ll leave my house in the morning!”

She drew a cloth angrily from the bed and then she sat down on the mat, and a moment later she lay down on her side. I kept sitting on the bed and looking at her, and then at the door.

“Please, have you put the leaves back behind the door?” I asked shakily.
She turned on her back, and then she turned her head and looked at me.
“Yes, Yao, I put them back there,” she said, and her voice was a little bit calmer now, with strange lights dancing in them. “I can’t believe you! A man like you, and you’re afraid of a snake? Screaming instead of killing it?”

I looked at her, and sighed deeply because her disgusted voice was filling me with anger.
“And why shouldn’t I be afraid of snakes?” I asked coldly.
“Because you’re a man, Yao!” she shot at me.

“I am a man so I shouldn’t be afraid? What silliness is that? Why, are snakes afraid of a penis? You want me to whip out my penis and use it to kill a snake because I’m a man?”
She began to laugh then, slowly and full of mirth. She laughed until tears came to her eyes, and then she stood up, wiping tears from her eyes.

“Seems I have to protect you, Yao,” she said. “Look, our customs are different here, okay? So when I tell you something, you better adhere to it. Otherwise, I would have no option than to throw you out.”
I looked at her with raised eyebrows.
“So I’m forgiven?” I asked softly. “I stay with you?”
“You stay, Yao,” she said. “Now push over, near the wall. The floor is too hard for me.”

“Oh!” I said with relief, my voice hopeful. “We share a bed?”
“Yes, but don’t touch me, otherwise you’ll regret it!”
“I told you, I don’t do old women,” I said indignantly, and hurriedly moved close to the wall. It seemed like the safest place in the room anyway.

She stretched out beside me.
And, for the very first time in my life, I slept with a woman – albeit an old one – on the same bed till morning without thinking about love-making.

Somehow, I felt proud of that fact.
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