The Realm of Humanity

Charles Chanchori Ndegwa

The Realm of Humanity

chanchori09@gmail.com

www.chanchori.com

+254 727 342 579/+254 737 750 770

This book is pure fiction. Any names similar to those of people or places are purely coincidental. Except as permitted under the Kenyan Copyright Act No. 12 of 2001, no part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any Form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the writer.

Acknowledgement

Dedicated with careless abandon, to everybody who told me that they would buy my book if I ever decided to publish. Well, thank you for putting your money where your mouth is.

And to… wait. This is the part where people thank editors and wives/husbands and children and friends and alcohol buddies.

Well, thank you Samali Bitala for being the closest thing this book ever got to an editor. And to you Munira Hussein for consistently giving me the incentive to get this thing out there. Well, now it is out there.

Thanks to my imaginary wife. I’m glad I got this book over and done with before you and I ever met, or I would have been too busy having sex with you to ever get any work done.

And to my imaginary kids Tommy and Flasiah, you are the best thing I am yet to have.

To the friends who I had and never helped me in any way while writing this book, I’ll waste some ink and thank you for staying away. You would have been a distraction anyway. I’m talking to you Silas Kamanza.

You like the cover design? Well, let’s all collectively put our hands together for the aforementioned bastard Silas ‘Sharafa’ Kamanza. He’s not good at much, but he can pull a mean design. Just reach him on nsharafa@gmail.com. Thank me later.

Alcohol buddies? Well, this book got written in spite of those, so thanks for nothing guys. I don’t even remember your names.

Special thanks to my parents Flashia and Thomas Ndegwa for not reading this book. That way, you can continue thinking that I am the same innocent boy you abandoned contraceptives for.

Chapter one

He stepped out of his luxurious car and looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He always behaved like a thief when he was in this neighborhood. There was no telling who saw him and what they would whisper to his wife. It was around eight in the evening and it was a bright night.

He had lots and lots of complaints against his wife. When they met, she was a bank manager, beautiful, smart and always so full of life. He was just a small time doctor back then but that had been twenty three years ago when all he cared about were beautiful women, lots of cash and fast cars. Winnie, his wife, fell in the beautiful women category.

Theirs had been a blazing fire kind of relationship. They had sex on their second date and after that, there was no stopping them. They had sex in the car, at the balcony, in the office and even in the parking lot. Sometimes it was quick, sometimes it was slow but it was always fulfilling. Never would he forget the blowjob he had received once when they were in a restaurant full of people. Winnie had gone under the table, covered him well with a table cloth and given him the works. Hmm. The good old days!

Then their first born Charity came and everything changed. No more spontaneous blowjobs, no more daily sex in the most unexpected places, no more excitement. Everything went according to a set table and Charity got all the attention. Charity’s two o’clock in the morning heart wrenching screams and everything else associated with babies did all it could to turn him away from Winnie. Then she started neglecting herself. All the sexy clothes were gone and in their place came these baggy t-shirts, unappealing trousers and Neanderthal hair styles that pushed him over the edge.

The attention he had formally paid to Winnie went to his work. He quit his job as a doctor in a government dispensary and started his own clinic. Health Assurance Clinic was what he named it. It was his new Winnie. He dedicated at least eighteen hours a day to the place and in a couple of years, it was the most popular clinic in town. Needless to say, the more Health Assurance grew, the bigger the distance between him and his wife got.

Their second born Cory was more of an accident than a plan. They had talked of getting pregnant again but he was never ready to go through the whole baby ordeal again. One day, when Charity was seven years old, he went home drunk and had sex with his wife for the first time in months. He was so drunk that he couldn’t remember most of it. Did he enjoy it? Did she enjoy it? Ah, hell. Who cares?

Two months later, she hit him with the bad news. She was pregnant. She seemed really excited about it but he did not share her excitement. There were times when he envied her. Other than her self physical neglect, she was the same Winnie he fell in love with. She was always so full of life and she never complained of his absence. When he turned his attention to his clinic, she turned hers to Charity. When Cory came, it was the best day of her life.

Health Assurance Clinic was now a house hold name. It had branches all over the city and in major towns in the country, and he was considering branching out in the neighboring countries. There were advertisements of the clinic on TV and Billboards but he still wasn’t happy. There was something lacking in his life and he didn’t know what until he met Joey.

Joey was eighteen years younger than he was but she reminded him of the good old days he shared with Winnie. He felt twenty seven again and so full of life.

Whenever he wasn’t in the office, he was with her. He only saw Winnie and the children a few times in a week. Still, Winnie did not complain. There were Charity and Cory to think about now. He never beat her or yelled at her and he was generally polite to her. But she knew that he wasn’t happy. He hadn’t been happy since she got pregnant with Charity twenty two years ago. She hadn’t made him happy since then and though she had been bitter about it at first, years of being alone had toughened her up to it. She was a stranger to him and she learnt to live with that.

Lately, there was a smile on his face, something she hadn’t seen in years and she knew at once that someone somewhere was making her man happy. He was having an affair. She didn’t mind as long as he didn’t go home carrying divorce papers. She wanted her children to know that they still had a father and though he had been absent most of the time, she told them how he provided for everything they needed. He made sure the children never lacked anything they needed.

She hired a private investigator who confirmed her suspicions very fast. Her name was Ms. Mambo or Joey to her friends. She lived in an apartment in Westlands and she was thirty two years old. She was a bank manager at a local bank. She was five feet eight, slim and very easy on the eye. She was light skinned and when she smiled, her pretty face got even prettier. She was Winnie twenty three years ago. Now that she knew who her rival was, she felt comfortable. At least, she wasn’t some hooker somewhere whose only job was to prey on unhappily married men and take everything away from them. She seemed like a classy, respectable lady who had somehow attracted her husband.

She was glad that he hid it well from her. She was happy that he had the decency not to throw the affair to her face. At least, he still respected her and the children. However, there still existed a small part in her that wished if only she was still young and beautiful…if only she was still attractive in her husband’s eyes.

This particular evening, he called her with another one of his excuses. There was an emergency at the hospital and he wouldn’t be home till late. Don’t wait up. She didn’t. Cory, who was now a very bright form three student, was away in a boarding high school and Charity, a third year medical student, was away at the university; Winnie was all alone in the house. Sometimes she pondered about having an affair but who would want an old woman? She wasn’t one to be a sugar mummy so she steered off that thought. She went to bed all alone like she was used to.

He stepped out of his luxurious car and looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He always behaved like a thief when he was in this neighborhood. There was no telling who saw him and what they would whisper to his wife. It was around eight in the evening and it was a bright night. He wondered if she knew about him and Joey. That was highly unlikely considering that he had gone to extreme heights to keep his affair a secret or so he thought.

He climbed the stairs up to the second floor of the apartments in Westlands and rang the door bell twice so she would know it’s him. Joey always answered the door fast and with a smile on her face and today was no exception. She stood there with a glass of his favorite wine in her hand, a ready smile on her pretty face and dressed in a white robe. He knew she wore nothing under that robe.

Come on in love. She said, smiling wider and eyeing him lusciously. Spending time with him never ceased to amaze her. He took her to places she never knew existed before him and she knew that no one else would take her where he took her. Sometimes she got wet just at the thought of him. She wondered why his wife let him out of her sight. If she were the wife, she would never let this man out of her sight. She would keep him even if it meant putting a sign on his face. She would solely own him. No sharing.

She took off his coat and handed him the glass of wine. He smiled and kissed her. You are very beautiful. Do you know that?

She knew she was beautiful. She had lost count of the men that had told her that; some sincerely, others with the sole aim of getting into her pants. But somehow, this man said it in a manner that satisfied her. She believed every word that came out of his mouth. Sometimes she wondered if she meant anything to him other than the girl on the side. Did he love her? She failed to understand how, but she was in love with him.

Sometimes, she felt like he was still deeply in love with his wife. He had told her that they would never get pregnant and he would never marry her. He convinced her however, that he wished everyday that he had met her before he met Winnie. The damage was done so all there was to do now was to live with it.

You tell me that every day honey. She smiled back at him and showered him with petite kisses. She massaged his shoulders, back and feet and did to him stuff that Winnie hadn’t done in two decades. He watched as she prepared a hot meal for him and he wondered why he was so lucky.

He joined her in the kitchen and started by kissing her neck. She warmed up to his touch and reciprocated by turning and kissing him intensely. He untied the knot on her robe and pulled it off her body exposing her exquisite nakedness. Never would her body cease to amaze him. How many hours had God spent on creating her? He must have done it on the eighth day or something when he had all the time to create perfection. That was what she was. Perfection.

He lifted her off the ground and made her sit on the kitchen table with her thighs on either side of his waist. He owned her now as he worked his way down her neck, breasts and down below to her honey pot. It was all moist down there. She turned off the gas in autopilot because she didn’t want the smell of burning food to interrupt the forthcoming trip to heaven. She demanded that he fill her up immediately and he was like an obedient child pulling down his pants. His member found her waiting. He was like a soldier, walking into a dark cave full of warm contentment. He was flying high and she was right there with him, sighing as he pushed himself deeper and deeper into her.

Later, they lay beside each other on the bed, but neither of them remembered clearly how they had gotten to the bedroom. This was a moment both of them looked forward to; the peaceful window of time after sex and before he left her to go back to his wife. He had looked forward to lying naked beside her, taking pleasure in the caress of the silk sheets against his skin and the touch of her smooth skin. He had looked forward to running his finger along her naked body. She had looked forward to lying on his enormous hairy chest and to listen as he spoke softly to her in his deep voice.

That was amazing. She had heard him say that over a hundred times now but it never grew old.

It’s always amazing with you Eric. She bit her lower lip and wondered if she should pop her question now. What would he say?

Joey, I’ve been thinking. His voice was a low hum that interrupted her flow of thoughts. A part of me wants me to leave her for you. I want to divorce my wife.

She had been waiting a long time to hear those words from his mouth and now that they were here, they filled her with inexplicable terror.

What! Why? She raised her head and supported it on her elbow. If she was going to have this conversation, she would do it looking at him in the eye.

Why are you so inquisitive? I…it’s just that, I am not happy with her you know.

Yeah, I know. A sigh. That was why he was cheating on her in the first place. Have you thought about it?

No he hadn’t. In fact, he had no idea why he had told her that. He had made it clear that he would never impregnate her and neither would he marry her. Maybe it was the oxytocin talking. Maybe he was getting whipped. Tell you what, his hands caressed her body, let me think about it for a while longer, alright?

A lingering kiss followed. She didn’t want him to think that she was desperate for him to leave Winnie for her. But it was beginning. She would make him come to her without her direct asking. She would continue being nice to him, do things that his wife wouldn’t even dream of and take care of him in ways he only read about in a novel. By the time she was done with him, he would come begging to make her his only woman.

I have to go now. He said suddenly getting out of bed.

Why the hurry sweetheart? Just call her and tell her your patient needs your undivided attention tonight. She said smiling knowingly. He wouldn’t be lying to his wife entirely. Joey was his patient for the night and she needed his undivided attention. She pushed the sheets away and let his eyes feast on her thick, smooth thighs leading up to…

He turned his eyes quickly away from this temptation. He could feel the warmth engulfing his groin. But he had to go home tonight. He kissed her lightly on the lips and