You need to read this 'My lone dormitory trip' by Fatimah

This story is based on an anecdote I heard while gisting about secondary school days with my friends. It’s also for my darling Toyor Abudu, I’m writing at her behest.

The euphoria of being promoted to JSS2 and therefore leaving the bottom rung of secondary school and moving up one step in seniority hierarchy was dampened on the second day of resumption. I was assigned to Senior Bimpe Ahmed’s room.

My duty was to sweep her room three times a day, and scrub it on Saturday morning. Now the work wasn’t a problem, not at all. Senior Bimpe was. She was a wicked bully, she was also a lesbian with a fondness for junior girls. Therefore, my excitement at being a ‘senior’ waned very fast, I knew I was dead, or would soon be. Senior Bimpe had a reputation, and it wasn’t a good one.

After three weeks of washing her clothes, underwear included, sweeping her room SIX times daily and generally being her official errand girl, Senior Bimpe started being nice. Nice in a creepy way. The way you feed your chicken well just weeks before you make Christmas soup out of it. Or the way you’re nice to someone with a terminal illness because they’ll soon die.

She’d send me to buy her snacks, especially skeri and dodo, and give me the rest after having just a few bites. She didn’t punctuate her orders with insults and slaps like she used to do, she even gave me a pair of her old uniform.

Then one day she complained of aches in her back and thighs, she claimed it was so bad that she couldn’t go for night prep, and that I was to remain in the hostel with her while every other student went to read.

I was glad to be escaping night prep, a dreary two hours I spent day dreaming every day. We were not supposed to say a word, just to keep our butts glued to our seats and our eyes to our books. For an imaginative talkative like me, no one can imagine what a torture that was.

So staying in the hostel with an aching Senior Bimpe wasn’t a bad idea at all. Gladly I agreed to stay, pretending to genuinely care about her health when I’d have gleefully danced oppa gangnam style on her grave if she’d suddenly dropped dead.

After some minutes she asked me to come and massage some parts of her aching body. I spent over 30 minutes kneading her back and thighs while making faces behind her. I was relieved when she finally asked me to stop, but that relief melted and was replaced by apprehension when she said “lie down, let me return the favour”.

She did more than return the favour. Her massage started from my tiny budding breasts and ended in certain parts of my anatomy that I can’t even call their names out loud.

There was a delicious tingling and throbbing between my thighs. I had never felt like that before. I knew it was wrong, but I enjoyed it still. In fact, after that day, I was secretly hoping the experience would repeat itself.

Until I went to the chapel on Sunday. The pastor decided to preach about fornication and sins of the flesh, his reason being that we were teenagers and certain urges were normal. But as children of God, soldiers of Christ, we should resist them.

I felt as if he was talking to me, my seat burned a hole in my bum and I thought he was going to point at me suddenly and scream “sinner!”. There was no one more relieved than I when service ended that day.

After that day, I always found excuses when Senior Bimpe finally asked me to stay behind and tend to her in the hostel. Several times I gave excuses, until it became glaring that I was avoiding a repeat performance. Senior Bimpe found ways to make me pay for my ‘transgression’.

She went back to being horribly mean. She started giving me orders with slaps. She sent me on unnecessary errands. Then one day, she made me wash a bucketload of clothes and scrub her room. Then she sent me off on a quest, I was to get a book “My Journey would never end” from her friend’s dormitory.

After being sent on a merry chase round length and breath of the school, one kind senior finally took pity on me and told me that no such book existed. It was a prank to keep juniors busy and to punish them by tossing them to and fro like a tennis ball.

That night, when I got to my class for night prep, I was as tired as one who’d been chopping wood in the forest all day. I put my head on my table and dozed off. The next time I opened my sleepy eyes, the class was empty. My eyes flew wide open in shock, I hurriedly checked my wrist watch.

The time was 12:10 am. Sweat broke out on my forehead, I didn’t know whether to risk spending the rest of the night in the classroom, or to risk making the 10 minute journey to my hostel. I decided to walk to the hostel. Alone. In the dark. At past midnight.

I’d gone halfway when I met a girl walking towards the hostel block as well. Relief flooded my heart at the discovery that I wasn’t alone. “Hey” I greeted. She answered “wassup”.

We walked in companionable silence for about a minute before I spoke again, “my classmates are all wicked and mad o. I slept off and they left me in class like that. Such cruelty!” Her reply was a deep throaty laughter, “don’t mind them, students will be students, filled with so much mischief. They did the same thing to me too when I was alive”

Enh?!?! When you were alive ke? With all the ghost and madam koin koin stories I’d heard. Till this day, I don’t know exactly what happened. I don’t know if I walked, ran, or flew. I only know that the next time I was aware of anything, I was banging on the doors of my hostel and screaming like a banshee.

I served the punishment I got for disturbing the peace of the whole dormitory willingly. I was just glad I survived an encounter with a ghost.

That was years ago. Now I’m in SS2, but till this day I’ve never dozed anywhere except in my bed. I don’t even dare close my eyes! And I’m always the first person out the door immediately night prep is over! I escaped the ghost, but the ghost of that experience still haunts me.

Fatimah is a writer and an aspiring baby girl. Check out her awesome writings on the wanderinglass.com and follow her on Twitter @FlawlessMilo

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