Must Read: Before She Dies

Episode 7 years ago

Must Read: Before She Dies

Stella opened her eyes, attempted to stand but discovered she was tied to the chair. She tried to scream but couldn’t, because of the sellotape over her lips. She thought she was in a trance.

She looked around with difficulty and everyplace was strange. She fought to recollect but her memory was blurred. In some minutes, she closed her eyes, trying to shut off her fears and soon she became unconscious again. After about fifteen minutes, she opened her eyes, tried again to think, but her thoughts were still not coordinated. She looked up to the wall, looked around and saw a portrait which hung on it.


She immediately recognized the huge man in the picture and that sight brought an instant spate of memories. She suddenly remembered everything that had happened to her, all of them unpleasant.
***
Stella, her mum and many sympathizers who had come to condole with them over the death of President Williams, were sitting in the sitting room of one of Williams’ apartments in the country’s capital. Her mum’s phone rang and she excused herself and went into her room to answer her call. Every now and again, a sympathizer or groups of sympathizers came to Stella and condoled with her over the death of her dad. At a point, she got bored of them, excused herself and headed to her mum’s room. She got to her room’s door and was about getting hold of the doorknob, when she heard those words of her mum that instantly pierced through her conscience and made her feel as though she had lost breath. She regained herself a little bit and managed to eavesdrop to her mum’s phone call. She heard her mum saying this to the person she was talking to on the phone: Just leave him for me. I’ll take care of him like I did with my husband. I thought he would learn from what happened to Williams.

It’s a pity he will join him soon. When she felt her mum was about hanging up, she quickly but faintly withdrew to her room. Inside her room, she was lost in thoughts as she tried fruitlessly to predict many things. She fought to predict why her mum killed her dad, she fought to predict the person she was talking with on the phone and she fought to predict who she was saying she would handle as she handled her dad. When it became clear to Stella that the answers to the questions she was asking herself were not forthcoming, she decided with tears to confide to Destiny Noel, the Inspector General of Police, for he was his late father’s best friend and the only one she believed she could trust at the moment.

She dug into her trouser pockets for her handset, scrolled down to Noel’s number and called him. His line was about connecting when the door suddenly threw open and behold, it was her mum. She was holding a revolver with both hands, her face stern. Stella felt her stomach knot with fear at the sight of her mum and the gun in her palms, and the handset slipped from her hand and smashed on the floor. Her mum told her with tears that she had no option for she had known what was not meant for her. She was gradually pulling the trigger when Stella felt a sudden courage come into her and she acted.

With a firm kick, she sent her mum rolling on the floor as her gun flew to the wall. Before her mum could manage to stand and pick her phone, Stella had run past her, dashed out of the room and sped out of the compound, en route for the Inspector General’s house. After some minutes drive, her eyes moved to the rear-view mirror and she observed that a black Toyota Camry was speeding closely behind her. At first, she read no meaning into that, but, the more she looked at the car in the mirror, the more she concluded that there was something cold and sinister about the huge man behind the wheel. The man’s physiognomy overwhelmed her. He was about thirty-five years of age, a great hulk of a man and looked like an unrepentant ex-convict. Stella became panicky and turned left. The Camry also turned left, chasing madly after her. She pressed harder on the accelerator but the Camry suddenly swept past her, the rear end of the car skidding sideways and finally, it halted before her car.

Stella applied brakes instantly to avoid a collision. She was sitting fidgety in her car when the Camry’s door flung open and Rowland Reagan stepped out of it, his short finger firm on the trigger. It was at this point that Stella was bereft of her senses and she drifted towards unconsciousness.