MULATTO (Iyila) (Editing)

Chapter sixty

Pls be kind enough to press the star button if u like this chapter. Thank u. Now edited.

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Several days had passed since Iyila's heart searing encounter with Dedeny in the forest. Perhaps more days, perhaps weeks or even months, she wasn't certain. She had lost track of time since all her days and nights were spent in Mama Brown's dark room--recovering and recuperating--where she couldn't boldly tell the disimilarity between daytime and nightime.

She was recovering slowly but steadily. Though she was yet to utter a word to anyone and still fought with thoughts of Gabriel. She could however, note the difference in her behaviour and temperament over the passage of time.

The tears were no longer frequent visitors. She even smiled at times when Deila pulled one of her silly jokes and as Deila and Brown had suggested she at times came out to sit in the varenda--when everyone had left to attend to their chores--to feel the remainder of summer's breeze on her skin and a glimpse of sunshine while she watched the green leaves give way to bright yellow.

But she hadn't stopped fidgetting or stopped carressing her wrists with tenderness and care as she had done during the first periods of her recovery. She still felt sharp pain even though she had been convinced a dozen times by Deila that it was only in her head whenever she caught her in the act. Sometimes she shrieked when thoughts of Dede's fist on her face assailed her head.

She was always tired, always nervous, always staring at nothing in particular. Always drowning in her thoughts, always frightened as though the excruciating pain that she had once experienced, the degradation of being naked in the midst of numerous men and the feeling of belittlement were just a few paces from pulling down the defences that she had painstakingly built over time. As if all her efforts to remain strong only stood on a thin thread that could be easily cut down by her very worst fears.

The first few days of her recovery were horrible. Mostly filled with memories and nightmares that had threatened to snatch her sanity and render her utterly useless. Shock and pain had caused her to be temporarily blinded or ashamed... she wasn't really sure. She had been too spooked to open her eyes out of fear that once she did, it would only confirm what her heart had been telling her since that day at the forest...

That she had not been saved by that overseer, that he'd not arrived just in time to save her before Dede exacted his full cruelty. That fear of all the voices that she heard, Deila's, Mama Brown's, Tari were all figments of her imagination. All a mechanism to block Dede's viciousness, that she was in truth beneath Dede, still crying and begging him whilst he tortured her.

Even though Deila had told her about Dede's punishment when she had finally opened her eyes and Mama Brown's attack on him and even her banter with him which she'd made him promise to stay away from her, it just hadn't been enough to stop the nightmares. Or the fear of him, lurking around, perhaps hiding in a dark corner when no one was watching, with a wicked grin on his dark face which meant things she didn't want to recall only to tactifully abduct her to demonstrate his full dominance.

Those few days whenever she closed her eyes, she always saw Dede's wicked eyes absorbing her nudity with sheer greed and lust which had and still did make her feel always naked, always vulnerable, always weak. Even when she had tried to sleep in those early days, she always heard his hushed tone in her ears as his fingers dug into her thighs while he ordered her to moan his name immediately forcing her out of her winks. Memories of him had frequented her dreams, pursued her sanity and sometimes forced her to wake up in the middle of the night to cry into her bedsheet.

Those first days had moved in a repeated pattern: crying, dreaming and frequently dreading even the simpliest gesture. There were the days when just the sound of the strong breeze outside had frigtened her and in it she would detect the sound of Dede's belt in motion as it cut through the wind to collide with her skin in painful lashes.