Chapter 28
The first session was drawing to an end and non of the college girls could boast of having Jamal as their boyfriend. Even though most of them were still auspicious, the least were already bleak and hopeless. They were tired of haunting for the boy who can’t fall in love. And since they couldn’t get him, they resolved to label him a swot–a worst type of dweeb found in school.
Jamal on his own wasn’t bothered about what he was tagged as, even though deep down he wished they could understand that he wasn’t a creature to be tagged with such absurd names because he was definitely an elan. A loving dude. Someone capable of loving. He wasn’t a boy who can’t fall in love as his sobriquet stated, but there was no how he would prove since he wasn’t ready to hump any of them. Tamara still occupied his heart, so there was barely an aught space to foster another love for another girl. Jamal had decided not to be narked with whatever preposterous comments flying around about him. He was even going to take as one of the reason to abstain from them more and more.
However as austere Jamal was planing to become to all his sultry huntress, he was still indecisive about including Adarian or exempting her. Adarian was fast growing from being just a stalker to being a friend to him. Adarian, unlike other girls was understanding and seemed to savvy more about him. She wasn’t part of the league that went about to taint his personality regardless how many times he had given her huge chunk of his hostility. Adarian would only cry after sulking in the embarrassment he must have caused her before making her wonted statement; “I will come back for you. Will always come back for you. Because I love you Jamal.”
Jamal was undecided if he should allow a mere platonic friendship to rule between them or not. He couldn’t afford to watch such mild-mannered fille get hurt everytime because of him and at the same time he was not ready to get closer to her for the fear of losing Tamar from his heart. Nothingness, something soon happened to him that made Jamal hastily arrived at a his decision.
It was very late dark in one of the evenings that Jamal do saunter about his environments. This had been what he had routinized himself to do in evenings just to unwind himself from the tense and tension clumping inside of him. It was true that life in Rominick’s abode was dulcifying, and had nabbed him away from being a vagrant, but sometimes, Jamal had always had this ideas about his acetify past. Starting from where his mother and Meshach had confessed about someone named Ryan who happened to be his father and who happened to lam off the surface of the earth, his weird meeting with a girl that shared the same ordeal with him, who also happened to share the same birthdate, the most blissful night turned most blistery night with her in the cave–the night he was supposed to be dead but was resuscitated to life at Meshach’s best knowledge. It was this same grunge night Meshach asked them to fled their bosk to the city where he lost his mother on the way and later got dumped by Meshach himself. His past was awful and extremely acerbic.
Jamal sighed at his acetify past. Everything from his past had deserted him. His mother, Meshach and Tamara had left him all alone in the world to strive it out on his own. Well, only the talisman Meshach had preached to him about remained from his past. He recalled vividly how Meshach had neighed to him countless of time that he was born great, that he would grow up to be a very powerful creature and that the talisman would help him keep his powers in check, but all these words were appearing as another element of faux that had seeped out of the man’s mouth. How was he going to be a powerful being when he couldn’t even lift a pebble talk less of a tor. He didn’t even posses the macho often found in blokes who are into professional wrestling. So how the hell could he possibly grow up to be a powerful creature?
All these were the tenses that deserved to be eased out of his system, something he achieved during his trekking in eventides. But this particular evening, Jamal had chosen to stay out late. So late that the evening was getting dark and the sky was already sooty. Pitch grimly darkness covered the horizons that the earth looked as if it was about to be attacked by great apocalypse. The darkness of that evening could scare away the bats into their holes and chirping crickets into their hollows. Worse still, the cloud poured massively on planets earth that everywhere were blessed with wetness. Inside that rain, Jamal had toured home to embrace the warmth of his room. He already started blaming himself going out that evening. His cloth was wet with waters and coldness was taking over him. He just needed a bed to lie in other to bask in the warmness it would produced.
Jamal lumbered home that evening to meet the door of their home locked. He was surprised. He knew his foster father had gone on a business trip so it was only Hilton that was at home. Jamal was sceptical about Hilton coming out to open the door for him because right from the day he spurned Adarian in school, Hilton had always grubbed for a pound of flesh again him.
Jamal pressed the buzzer and waited for Hilton to open the door. His face rimed with coldness while his body was shivering–threatened to freeze.
“Go away.” Jamal heard Hilton’s voice. He looked to see him peeping from one of the windows in the house.
“Open this door I’m freezing.” Jamal begged.
“I said go away I don’t wanna see you in our house anymore.”
“Why are you doing this?”
No reply surfaced. Jamal sighed and asked again;
“What have I done Hilton?”
“I just hate you now.” His face was sweltry and didn’t register any pity.
“But why are you like this brother ?”
“I’m no more your brother. Jamal is dead! And you are just an impostor but you can’t replace him.”
“Ok Hilton I know you are mad at me but please just let me in for tonight I promise to leave your house early tomorrow morning. I’m freezing already. The cold is too much.” Jamal begged now almost in tears.
“No! Go back to the street you belong to and sleep there. You don’t belong here anymore.”
“Please Hilton.” The poor boy had started crying.
“I hate the day I met you Khalid .”
“Please.”
“Good bye, Khalid.” Hilton said, withdrew his face inside his room and closed the blinds.
Jamal wept more and more as he witnessed Hilton’s cruel attitude towards him. He couldn’t believe he was so stoic. He had envisaged Hilton as the brother he never had, the father he lost and a friend he trusted but now all of these had gone down the drainage. Jamal felt depressed and his spirit, dispirited. He was lonely and the thought of sledging it back to vagrant life came peeking at him.
Jamal continued slithering away from home, away from the pleasant life he was already enjoying, still quivering inside the epileptic rain and the apocalyptic darkness. The rain beat him while the darkness tortured him. His legs became wobbled out of excessive walking. Jamal was freezing, his eyes was hurting due to the darkness and his legs were going limp. Strength was also fast draining away from his body, Jamal slumped down.
He was in his sprawling position when he noticed something gaited towards him. Something wasn’t human being, neither was it something. Something was a wolf. A very big and gigantic wolf with this aura of fear haloing around it. Jamal sighed and smiled faintly. Then closed his eyes to embrace his death It was time to die.The same monster that killed Tamara, that killed his mother had also appeared to him to kill him. What a good way to die.
But Jamal woke up about one hour later to to meet himself in cozy room, spruced with the nicest warmth he could ever needed at that time. He was lying on the bed and with him on the bed was Adarian, smiling at him.
“The monster, did you see the monster? How did I get here ?”
“What are you talking about Jamal ? There is no monster here.” Adarian repressed the urge to wolf out. Jamal’s words had wounded her, and whenever she was hurt she got peeved up bringing large tendency she would transform. She was not a monster, she was werewolf.
“How did I get here?”
“I stalked you. Something have always being doing every evening whenever you are out there. So today I found out that Hilton wasn’t going to allow you enter the house despite the rain so I saw you slumped down and I had no choice than to bring you to my apartment.”
“Thank you.” Jamal said.
Instantly, his decision was made to keep Adarian as a friend and more importantly, to replace the one he just lost. But despite his wish to make her his friend, he behest himself not to go beyond being platonic. He would acknowledge Tamar that respect.
Jamal was still in reverie when he noticed a toddler of not more than one-half year old crawled to the bed he was lying. The toddler’s body was lithe while his lissom face carried the picture of someone he couldn’t fix at the moment and it didn’t appear he would soon. The baby’s smile looked exactly like his, perhaps he was just fantasizing because Jamal had found himself drawing more to the baby.
“Dada. Euhm–emm, dada.” The tot cooed out as she smiled a typical smile Jamal knew always stay glued on his own face too.
The baby just referred to him as a father. Jamal was amazed.
“You have a baby ?” His face carried wrinkles as he asked Adarian who seemed to be huffy at the baby’s presence in the room. She seemed to look at her like the pretty tot was some sort of nudnick. That didn’t please Jamal so well.
“Oh you mean this puffy thing ? She belongs to my maid.” Adarian exclaimed cursedly.
Story continues ..